I 







f 



/ 



i 



FAMOUS AMERICANS 



OF 



RECENT TIMES. 



BY 



JAMES PART ON, 

AUTHOR OF "life OF ANDREW JACKSON," "HFE AND TIMES OF AARON BURR," 

"life and times of benjamin franklin," ETa 




BOSTON: 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 

1867. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 
L the Clerk's Office of the District Covurt of the District of Massachusetts. 



l,-j^ 



A 




* 

'l!! 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 

Cambridge. 



V 



^' 



CONTENTS. 



■ 3? 



Page 
Henry Clay ........ 1 

D,*NiEL Webster ....... 53 

John C. Calhoun 113 

John Randolph 173 

Stephen Girard and his College . . . .221 

James Gordon Bennett and the New York Herald 259 

Charles Goodyear ....... 30Y 

Henry Ward Beecher and his Church . . . 347 

Commodore Vanderbilt ...... 313 

Theodosia Burr ....... 391 

John Jacob Astor 42T 



NOTE. 

The papers contained in this volume were originally pub- 
lished in the North American Review, with four exceptions. 
Those upon Theodosia Burr and John Jacob Astor first 
appeared in Harper's Magazine ; that upon Commodore Van- 
DERBiLT, in the Neio York Ledger ; and that upon Henry 
"Ward Beecher and his Church, in the Atlantic Monthly. 



HENRY CLAY 



HENRY CLAY. 



THE close of the war removes the period preceding it to a 
great distance from us, so that we can judge its public men 
as though we were the " posterity " to whom they sometimes ap- 
pealed. James Buchanan still haunts the neighborhood of Lan- 
caster, a living man, giving and receiving dinners, paying his 
taxes, and taking his accustomed exercise ; but as an historical 
figure he is as complete as Bolingbroke or Walpole. It is not 
merely that his work is done, nor that the results of his work 
are apparent ; but the thing upon which he wrought, by their 
relation to which he and his contemporaries are to be estimated, 
has perished. The statesmen of his day, we can all now plainly 
see, inherited from the founders of the Republic a problem im- 
possible of solution, with which some of them wrestled manfully, 
others meanly, some wisely, others foolishly. If the workmen 
have not all passed away, the work is at once finished and de- 
stroyed, like the Russian ice-palace, laboriously built, then melted 
in the sun. We can now have the requisite sympathy with 
those late doctors of the body politic, who came to the consul- 
tation pledged not to attempt to remove the thorn from its flesh, 
and trained to regard it as the spear-head in the side of Epami- 
nondas, — extract it, and the patient dies. In the writhings of 
the sufferer the barb has fallen out, and lo ! he lives and is get- 
ting well. "We can now forgive most of those blind healers, and 
even admire such of them as were honest and not cowards ; for, 
in truth, it was an impossibility with which they had to grapple, 
and it was not one of their creating. 

Of our public men of the sixty years preceding the war, Henry 
Clay was certainly the most shining figure. Was there ever a 



4 HENRY CLAY. 

public man, not at the head of a state, so beloved as he ? "Who 
ever heard such cheei's, so hearty, distinct, and ringing, as those 
which his name evoked ? Men shed tears at his defeat, and 
women went to bed sick from pure sympathy with his disap- 
pointment. He could not travel during the last thirty years of 
his life, but only make progresses. When he left his home the 
public seized him and boi-e him along over the land, the commit- 
tee of one State passing him on to the committee of another, and 
the hurrahs of one town dying away as those of the next caught 
his ear. The country seemed to place all its resources at his 
disposal; all commodities sought his acceptance. Passing through 
Newark once, he thoughtlessly ordered a carriage of a certain 
pattern : the same evening the carriage was at the door of his 
hotel in New York, the gift of a few Newark friends. It was so 
everywhere and with everything. His house became at last a 
museum of curious gifts. There was the counterpane made for 
him by a lady ninety-three years of age, and Washington's camp- 
goblet given him by a lady of eighty ; there were pistols, rifles, 
and fowling-pieces enough to defend a citadel ; and, among a bun- 
dle of walking-sticks, was one cut for him from a tree that shaded 
Cicero's grave. There were gorgeous prayer-books, and Bibles 
of exceeding magnitude and splendor, and silver-ware in great 
profusion. On one occasion there arrived at Ashland the sub- 
stantial present of twenty-three barrels of salt. In his old age, 
when his fine estate, through the misfortunes of his sons, was 
burdened with mortgages to the amount of thirty thousand dol- 
lars, and other large debts weighed heavily upon his soul, and he 
feared to be compelled to sell the home of fifty years and seek a 
strange abode, a few old friends secretly raised the needful sum, 
secretly paid the mortgages and discharged the debts, and then 
caused the aged orator to be informed of what had been done, 
but not of the names of the donors. " Could my life insure the 
success of Henry Clay, I would freely lay it down this day," 
exclaimed an old Rhode Island sea-captain on the morning of 
the Presidential election of 1844. Who has forgotten the passion 
of disappointment, the amazement and despair, at the result of 
that day's fatal work ? Fatal we thought it then, little dreaming 



HEKRY CLAY. 5 

that, while it precipitated evil, it brought nearer the day of 
deliverance. 

Our readers do not need to be reminded that popularity the 
most intense is not a proof of merit. The two most mischievous 
men this country has ever produced were extremely popular, — 
one in a State, the other in every State, — and both for long 
periods of time. There are certain men and women and children 
who are natural heart-winners, and their gift of winning hearts 
seems something apart from their general character. We have 
known this sweet power over the affections of others to be pos- 
sessed by very worthy and by very barren natures. There are 
good men who repel, and bad men who attract. "VVe cannot, 
therefore, assent to the opinion held by many, that popularity is 
an evidence of shallowness or ill-desert. As there are pictures 
expressly designed to be looked at from a distance by great num- 
bers of people at once, — the scenery of a theatre, for example, 
— so there are men who appear formed by Nature to stand forth 
before multitudes, captivating every eye, and gathering in great 
harvests of love with little effort. If, upon looking closely at 
these pictures and these men, we find them less admirable than 
they seemed at a distance, it is but fair to remember that they 
were not meant to be looked at closely, and that " scenery " has 
as much right to exist as a Dutch painting which bears the test 
of the microscope. 

It must be confessed, however, that Henry Clay, who was for 
twenty-eight years a candidate for the Presidency, cultivated his 
popularity. Without ever being a hypocrite, he was habitually 
an actor ; but the part which he enacted was Henry Clay exag- 
gerated. He was naturally a most courteous man ; but the con- 
sciousness of his position made him more elaborately and univer- 
sally courteous than any man ever was from mere good-nature. 
A man on the stage must overdo his part, in order not to seem 
to underdo it. There was a time when almost every visitor to 
the city of Washington desired, above all things, to be presented 
to three men there. Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, whom to have 
seen was a distinction. When the country member brought for- 
ward his agitated constituent on the floor of the Senate-chamber, 



6 HENRY CLAY. 

and introduced him to Daniel "Webster, the Expounder was likelj 
enough to thrust a hand at him without so much as turning his 
head or discontinuing his occupation, and the stranger shrunk 
away painfully conscious of his insignificance. Calhoun, on the 
contrary, besides receiving him with civility, would converse with 
him, if opportunity favored, and treat him to a disquisition on 
the nature of government and the " beauty " of nullification, striv- 
ing to make a lasting impression on his intellect. Clay would 
rise, extend his hand with that Avinning grace of his, and in- 
stantly captivate him by his all-conquering courtesy. He would 
call him by name, inquire respecting his health, the town whence 
he came, how long he had been in Wasliington, and send him 
away pleased with himself and enchanted with Henry Clay. 
And what was his delight to receive a few weeks after, in his 
distant village, a copy of the Kentuckian's last speech, bearing 
on the cover the frank of " H. Clay " ! It was almost enough to 
make a man think of " running for Congress " ! And, what was 
still more intoxicating, Mr. Clay, who had a surprising memory, 
would be likely, on meeting this individual two years after the 
introduction, to address him by name. 

There was a gamy flavor, in those days, about Southern men, 
which was very pleasing to the people of the North. Reason 
teaches us that the barn-yard fowl is a more meritorious bird 
than the game-cock ; but the imagination does not assent to the 
proposition. Clay was at once game-cock and domestic fov»'l. 
Plis gestures called to mind the magnificently branching trees of 
his Kentucky forests, and his handwriting had the neatness and 
delicacy of a female copyist. There was a careless, graceful ease 
in his movements and attitudes, like those of an Indian chief; 
but he was an exact man of business, who docketed his letters, 
and could send from Washington to Ashland for a document, tell- 
ing in what pigeon-hole it could be found. Naturallj^ impetuous, 
he acquired early in life an habitual moderation of statement, an 
habitual consideration for other men's self-love, which made him 
the pacificator of his time. The great compromiser was himself 
a compi'omise. The ideal of education is to tame men without 
lessening their vivacity, — to unite in them the freedom, the dig- 



HENRY CLAY. 7 

nity, the prowess of a Tecumseh, with the serviceable qualities 
of the civilized man. This happy union is said to be sometimes 
produced in the pupils of the great public schools of England, 
who are savages on the play-ground and gentlemen in the school- 
room. In no man of our knowledge has there been combined so 
much of the best of the forest chief with so much of the good of 
the trained man of business as in Henry Clay. This was one 
secret of his power over classes of men so diverse as the hunters 
of Kentucky and the manufacturers of New England. 

It used to be accounted a merit in a man to rise to high station 
from humble beginnings ; but we now perceive that humble 
beginnings are favorable to the development of that force of 
character which wins the world's great prizes. Let us never 
again commend any one for "rising" from obscurity to eminence, 
but reserve our special homage for those who have become 
respectable human beings in spite of having had every advantage 
procured for tliem by rich father^. Henry Clay found an Eton 
and an Oxford in Old Virginia that were better for him than 
those of Old England. Few men have been more truly fortu- 
nate in their education than he. It was said of a certain lady, 
that to know her was a liberal education ; and there really have 
been, and are, women of whom that could be truly averred. But 
perhaps the greatest good fortune that can befall an intelligent 
and noble-minded youth is to come into intimate, confidential 
relations with a wise, learned, and good old man, one who has 
been greatly trusted and found worthy of trust, who knows the 
world by having long taken a leading part in its affairs, and has 
outlived illusions only to get a firmer footing in realities. This, 
indeed, is a liberal education ; and this was the happiness of 
Henry Clay. Nothing in biography is so strange as the cer- 
tainty with which a superior youth, in the most improbable cir- 
cumstances, finds the mental nourishment he needs. Here, in 
the swampy region of Hanover County, Virginia, was a bare- 
footed, ungainly urchin, a poor widow's son, without one influ- 
ential relative on earth ; and there, in Richmond, sat on the 
chancellor's bench George "Wythe, venerable with years and 
honors, one of the grand old men of Old Virginia, the preceptor 



8 HENRY CLAY. 

of Jefferson, signer of the Declaration of Independence, the most 
learned man in his profession, and one of the best men of any 
profession. Who could have foreseen that this friendless orphan, 
a Baptist preacher's son, in a State where to be a " dissenter " 
was social inferiority, should have found in this eminent judge a 
friend, a mentor, a patron, a father ? 

Yet it came about in the most natural way. "We catch our 
first glimpse of the boy when he sat in a little log school-house, 
without windows or floor, one of a humming score of shoeless 
boys, where a good-uatured, irritable, drinking English school- 
master taught him to read, write, and cipher as far as Practice. 
This was the only school he ever attended, and that was all he 
learned at it. His widowed mother, with her seven young chil- 
dren, her little farm, and two or three slaves, could do no more 
for him. Next, we see him a tall, awkward, slender stripling of 
thirteen, still barefoot, clad in homespun butternut of his mother's 
making, tilling her fields, and going to mill with his bag of corn 
strapped upon the family pony. At fourteen, in the year 1791, 
a place was found for him in a Richmond drug-store, where he 
served as errand-boy and youngest clerk for one year. 

Then occurred the event whicli decided his career. His 
mother having married again, her husband had influence enough 
to procure for the lad the place of copying clerk in the office of 
the Court of Chancery. The young gentlemen then employed in 
the office of that court long remembered the entrance amono; 
them of their new comrade. He was fifteen at the time, but very 
tall for his age, very slender, very awkward, and far from hand- 
some. His good mother had arrayed him in a full suit of pepper- 
and-salt " figginy," an old Virginia fabric of silk and cotton. His 
shirt and shirt-collar were stiffly starched, and his coat-tail stood 
out boldly behind him. The dandy law clerks of metropolitan 
Richmond exchanged glances as this gawky figure entered, and 
took his place at a desk to begin his work. There was some- 
thing in his manner which prevented their indulgence in the jests 
that usually greet the arrival of a country youth among city 
blades ; and they afterwards congratulated one another that the}^ 
had waited a little before beginning to tease him, for they soon 



HENRY CLAY. 9 

found tliat he had brought with him from the country an exceed- 
ingly sharp tongue. Of his first service little is known, except 
the immense fact that he was a most diligent reader. It rests on 
better authority than " Campaign Lives," that, while his fellow- 
clerks went abroad in the evening in search of pleasure, this lad 
stayed at home with his books. It is a pleasure also to know 
I that he had not a taste for the low vices. He came of sound 
English stock, of a family who would not have regarded drunk- 
enness and debauchery as " sowing wild oats," but recoiled from 
the thought of them with horror. Clay was flir from being a 
saint ; but it is our privilege to believe of him that he was a 
clean, temperate, and studious young man. 

Bichmond, the town of the young Republic that had most in it 
of the metropolitan, proved to this aspiring youth as true a Uni- 
versity as the printing-office in old Boston was to Benjamin 
Franklin ; for he found in it the culture best suited to him and 
his circumstances. Chancellor Wythe, then sixty-seven years of 
age, overflowing with knowledge and good nature, was the presi- 
dent of that univei'sity. Its professors were the cluster of able 
men who had gone along with "Washington and Jeffisrson in the 
measures which resulted in the independence of the country. 
Patrick Henry was there to teach him the arts of orator}'. 
There was a flourishing and famous debating society, the pride 
of the young men of Richmond, in which to try his half-fledged 
powers. The impulse given to thought by the American Revo- 
lution was quickened and prolonged by the thrilling news which 
every vessel brought from France of the revolution there. There 
was an atmosphere in Virginia favorable to the growth of a 
sympathetic mind. Young Clay's excellent handwriting brought 
him gradually into the most affectionate relations with Chancellor 
Wythe, whose aged hand trembled to such a degree that he was 
glad to borrow a copyist from the clerk's office. For nearly four 
years it was the young man's principal duty to copy the decisions 
of the venerable Chancellor, which were curiously learned and 
elaborate ; for it was the bent of the Chancellor's mind to trace 
the law to its sources in the ancient world, and fortify his posi- 
tions by citations from Greek and Latin authors. The Greek 
1* 



10 HENRY CLAY. 

passages were a plague to the copyist, who knew not the alpliabet 
of that language, but copied it, so to speak, by rote. 

Here we have another proof that, no matter what a man's op- 
portunities are, he only learns what is congenial with his nature 
and circumstances. Livinsf under the influence of this learned 
judge, Henry Clay might have become a man of learning. 
George Wythe was a " scholar " in the ancient acceptation of the 
word. The whole education of his youth consisted in his acquir- 
ing the Latin language, which his mother taught hira. Early 
inheriting a considerable fortune, he squandered it in dissipation, 
and sat down at thirty, a reformed man, to the study of the law. 
To his youthful Latin he now added Greek, which he studied 
assiduously for many years, becoming, probably, the best Greek 
scholar in Virginia. His mind would have wholly lived in the 
ancient world, and been exclusively nourished from the ancient 
literatures, but for the necessities of his profession and the stir- 
ring political events of his later life. The Stamp Act and the 
Revolution varied and completed his education. His young 
copyist was not attracted by him to the study of Greek and 
Latin, nor did he catch from him the habit of probing a subject 
to the bottom, and ascending from the questions of the moment 
to universal principles. Henry Clay probed nothing to the bot- 
tom, except, perhaps, the game of whist ; and though his instincts 
and tendencies were high and noble, he had no grasp of general 
trutlis. Under Wythe, he became a stanch Republican of the 
Jeffersonian school. Under Wythe, who emancipated his slaves 
before his death, and set apart a portion of his estate for their 
maintenance, he acquired a repugnance to slavery which he 
never lost. The Chancellor's learning and philosophy were not 
for hira, and so he passed them by. 

The tranquil wisdom of the judge was counteracted, in some 
degree, by the excitements of the debating society. As he grew 
older, the raw and awkward stripling became a young man whose 
every movement had a winning or a commanding grace. Hand- 
some he never was ; but his ruddy face and abundant light hair, 
the grandeur of his forehead and the speaking intelligence of his 
countenance, more than atoned for the irregularity of his feature?. 



HENRY CLAY. 11 

His face, too, was a compromise. With all its vivacity of ex- 
pression, there was always something that spoke of the Baptist 
preacher's son, — just as Andrew Jackson's face had the set ex- 
pression of a Presbyterian elder. But of all the bodily gifts 
bestowed by Nature upon this favored child, the most unique and 
admirable was his voice. Who ever heard one more melodious ? 
There was a depth of tone in it, a volume, a compass, a rich and 
tender Tiarmony, which invested all he said with majesty. We 
heard it la?t when he was an old man past seventy ; and all he 
said was a few words of acknowledgment to a group of ladies in 
^the largest hall in Philadelphia. He spoke only in the ordinary 
tone of conversation ; but his voice filled the room as the organ 
fills a great cathedral, and the ladies stood spellbound as the 
swelling cadences rolled about the vast apartment. We have 
heard much of Whitefield's piercing voice and Patrick Henry's 
silvery tones, but we cannot believe that either of those natural 
orators possessed an organ superior to Clay's majestic bass. No 
one who ever heard liim speak will find it difficult to believe 
what tradition reports, that he was the peerless star of the Rich- 
mond Debating Society in 1795. 

Oratory was then in the highest vogue. Young Virginians 
did not need to look beyond the sea in order to learn that tln^ 
orator was the man most in request in the dawn of freedon;. 
Chatham, Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Pitt were inconceivably 
imposing names at that day ; but was not Patrick Henry thtj 
foremost man in Virginia, only because he could speak and en- 
tertain an audience ? And what made John Adams President 
but his fiery utterances in favor of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence ? There were other speakers then in Virginia who would 
have had to this day a world-wide fame if they had spoken where 
the world could hear them. The tendency now is to undervalue 
oratory, and we regret it. We believe that, in a free country, 
every citizen should be able to stand undaunted before his fellow- 
citizens, and give an account of the faith that is in him. It is no 
argument against oratory to point to the Disraelis of both coun- 
tries, and say that a gift possessed by such men cannot be a val- 
uable one. It is the unmanly timidity and shamefacedness of 



12 HENKY CLAY. 

the Test of us that give to such men tlieir preposterous impor- 
tance. It were a calamity to America if, in the present rage for 
ball-playing and boat-rowing, which we heartily rejoice in, the 
debating society should be forgotten. Let us rather end the 
sway of oratory by all becoming orators. Most men who can 
talk well seated in a chair can learn to talk well standing on 
their legs ; and a man who can move or instruct five persons in a 
small room can learn to move or instruct two thousand in a large 
one. 

That Henry Clay cultivated his oratorical talent in Rich- 
mond, we have his own explicit testimony. He told a class of 
law students once that he ow^ed his success in life to a habit early 
formed, and for some years continued, of reading daily in a book 
of history or science, and declaiming the substance of what he 
had read in some solitary place, — a cornfield, the forest, a barn, 
with only oxen and horses for auditors. " It is," said he, " to 
this early practice of the art of all arts that I am indebted for the 
primary and leading impulses that stimulated my progress, and 
have shaped and moulded my entire destiny." We should be 
glad to know more of this self-training ; but ]\Ir. Clay's " cam- 
paign " biographers have stuffed their volumes too full of eulogy 
to leave room for such instructive details. We do not even know 
the books from which he declaimed. Plutarqh's Lives were fa- 
vorite reading with him, we accidentally learn ; and his speeches 
contain evidence that he was powerfully influenced by the writ- 
ings of Dr. Franklin. We believe it was from Franklin that he 
learned very much of the art of managing men. Franklin, we 
think, aided this impetuous and exaggerating spiwt to acquire 
his habitual moderation of statement, and that sleepless courtesy 
which, in his keenest encounters, generally kept him within par- 
liamentary bounds, and enabled him to live pleasantly with men 
from whom he differed in opinion. Obsolete as many of his 
speeches are, from the transient nature of the topics of which 
they treat-, they may still be studied with profit by young orators 
and old politicians as examples of parliamentary politeness. It 
was the good-natured and wise Franklin that helped him to this. 
It is certain, too, that at some part of his earlier life he read 



HENRY CLAY. 13 

translations of Demosthenes; for of all modern orators Henry 
Clay was the most Deraosthenian. Calhoun purposely and con- 
sciously imitated the Athenian orator; but Clay was a kindred 
spirit with Demosthenes. We could select passages from both 
these orators, and no man could tell which was American and 
which was Greek, unless he chanced to remember the passage. 
Tell us, gentle reader, were the sentences following spoken by 
Henry Clay after the war of 1812 at the Federalists who had 
opposed that war, or by Demosthenes against the degenerate 
Greeks who favored the designs of Philip? 

" From first to last I have uniformly pursued the just and 
virtuous course, — asserter of the honors, of the prerogatives, of 
the glory of my country. Studious to support them, zealous to 
advance them, my whole being is devoted to this glorious cause. 
I was never known to walk abroad with a face of joy and exulta- 
tion at the success of the enemy, embracing and announcing the 
joyous tidings to those who I supposed would transmit it to the 
proper place. I was never known to receive the successes of my 
own country with trembling, with sighs, with my eyes bent to the 
earth, like those impious men who are the defamers of their 
country, as if by such conduct they were not defamers of 
themselves." 

Is it Clay, or is it Demosthenes ? Or have we made a mis- 
take, and copied a passage from the speech of a Unionist of 
1865? 

After serving four years as clerk and amanuensis, barely earn- 
ing a subsistence. Clay was advised by his venerable friend, the 
Chancellor, to study law ; and a place was procured for him in 
the office of the Attorney-General of the State. In less than a 
year after formally beginning his studies he was admitted to the 
bar. This seems a short preparation ; but the whole period of 
his connection with Chancellor Wythe was a study of the law. 
The Chancellor was what a certain other chancellor styles "a 
full man," and Henry Clay was a receptive youth. 

When he had obtained his license to practise he was twenty 
years of age. Debating-society fame and drawing-room popular- 
ity do not, in an old commonwealth like Virginia, bring practice 



14 HENRY CLAY. 

to a lawyer of twenty. But, as a distinguished French author 
has recently remarked of Julius Ca3sar, " In him was united the 
elegance of manner which wins, to the energy of character which 
commands." He sought, therefore, a new sphere of exertion far 
from the refinements of Richmond. Kentucky, which Boone 
explored in 1770, was a part of Virginia when Clay was a child, 
and only became a State in 1792, when first he began to copy 
Chancellor Wythe's decisions. The first white family settled in 
it in 1775 ; but when our young barrister obtained his license, 
twenty-two years after, it contained a white population of nearly 
two hundred thousand. His mother, with five of her children 
and a second husband, had gone thither five years before. In 
1797 Henry Clay removed to Lexington, the new State's oldest 
town and capital, though then containing, it is said, but fifty 
houses. He was a stranger there, and almost penniless. He 
took board, not knowing where the money was to come from to 
pay for it. There were already several lawyers of repute in the 
place. "I remember," said IMr. Clay, forty-five years after, 
"how comfortable I thousfht I should be if I could make one 
hundred pounds a j^ear, Virginia money ; and with what delight 
I received my first fifteen-shilling fee. My hopes were more 
than realized. I immediately rushed into a successful and lucra- 
tive practice." In a year and a half he was in a jDOsition to 
marry the daughter of one of the first men of the State, Colonel 
Thomas Hart, a man exceedingly beloved in Lexington. 

It is surprising how addicted to litigation were the early set- 
tlers of the Western States. The imperfect surveys of land, 
the universal habit of getting goods on credit at the store, and 
*' difficulties " between individuals ending in bloodshed, filled the 
court calendars with land disputes, suits for debt, and exciting 
murder cases, which gave to lawyers more importance and better 
chances of advancement than they possessed in the older States. 
Mr. Clay had two strings to his bow. Besides being a man of 
red tape and pigeon-holes, exact, methodical, and strictly attentive 
to business, he had a power over a Kentucky jury such as no 
other man has ever wielded. To this day nothing pleases aged 
Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their 



HENRY CLAY. lO 

fathers tell, of Clay's liappy repartees to opposing counsel, his 
ingenious cross-questioning of witnesses, his sweeping torrents of 
invective, his captivating courtesy, his melting pathos. Single 
gestures, attitudes, tones, have come down to us through two or 
three memories, and still please the curious guest at Kentuck}' 
firesides. But when we turn to the cold records of this part of 
his life, we find little to justify his traditional celebrity. It ap- 
pears that the principal use to which his talents were applied 
during the first years of his practice at the bar was in defending 
murderers. He seems to have shared the feeling which then 
prevailed in the Westera country, that to defend a prisoner at 
the bar is a nobler thing than to assist in defending the public 
against his further depredations ; and he threw all his force into 
the defence of some men who would have been "none the worse 
for a hanging." One day, in the streets of Lexington, a drunken 
fellow whom he had rescued from the murderer's doom cried out, 
" Here comes Mr. Clay, who saved my life." " Ah ! my poor 
fellow," replied the advocate, " I fear I have saved too many like 
you, who ought to be hanged." The anecdotes printed of his 
exploits in cheating the gallows of its due are of a quality which 
shows that the power of this man over a jury lay much in his 
manner. His delivery, which "bears absolute sway in oratory," 
was bewitching and irresistible, and gave to quite commonplace 
wit and very questionable sentiment an amazing power to please 
and subdue. 

We are far from thinking that he was not a very able lawyer. 
Judge Story, we remember, before whom he argued a cause later 
in life, was of opinion that he would have won a high position at 
the bar of the Supreme Court, if he had not been early drawn 
away to public life. In Kentucky he was a brilliant, successful 
practitioner, such as Kentucky wanted and could appreciate. In 
a very few years he was the possessor of a fine estate near Lex- 
ington, and to the single slave who came to him as his share of 
his father's property were added several others. His wife being 
a skilful and vigorous manager, he was in independent circum- 
stances, and ready to serve the public, if the public wished him, 
when he had been but ten years in his Western home. Thus he 



16 HENRY CLAY. 

had a basis for a public career, without which few men can long 
serve the public with honor and success. And this was a prin- 
cipal reason of the former supremacy of Southern men in Wash- 
ington ; nearly all of them being men who owned land, which 
slaves tilled for them, whether they vpere present or absent. 

The young lawyer took to politics very naturally. Posterity, 
which will judge the public men of that period chiefly by their 
course with regard to slavery, will note with pleasure that Clay's 
first public act was an attempt to deliver the infant State of 
Kentucky from that curse. The State Constitution w^as to be 
remodelled in 1799. Fresh from the society of Chancellor 
Wythe, an abolitionist who had set free his own slaves, — fresh 
from Richmond, where every man of note, from Jefferson and 
Patrick Henry downwards, was an abolitionist, — Henry Clay 
began in 1798, being then twenty-one years of age, to write a 
series of articles for a newspaper, advocating the gradual aboli- 
tion of slavery in Kentucky. He afterwards spoke on that side 
at public meetings. Young as he was, he took the lead of the 
public-spirited young men who strove to purge the State from 
this iniquity; but in the Convention the proposition was voted 
down by a majority so decisive as to banish the subject from poli- 
tics for fifty years. Still more honorable was it in Mr. Clay, 
that, in 1829, when Calhoun was maturing nullification, he could 
publicly say that among the acts of his life which he reflected 
upon with most satisftiction was his youthful eflfort to secure 
emancipation in Kentucky. 

The chapter of our history most abounding in all the elements 
of interest will be that one which will relate the rise and first 
national triumph of the Democratic party. Young Clay came to 
the Kentucky stump just when the country was at the crisis of 
the struggle between the Old and the New. But in Kentucky 
it was not a struggle ; for the people there, mostly of Virginian 
birth, had been personally benefited by Jefferson's equalizing 
measures, and were in the fullest sympathy w-ith his political 
doctrines. When, therefore, this brilliant and commanding youth, 
with that magnificent voice of his, and large gesticulation, mount- 
ed the wagon that usually served as platform in the open-air 



HENRY CLAY. 17 

meetings of Kentucky, and gave forth, in fervid oratory, the 
republican principles he had imbibed in Richmond, he won that 
immediate and intense popularity which an orator always wins 
who gives powerful expression to the sentiments of his hearers. 
We cannot wonder that, at the close of an impassioned address 
upon the Alien and Sedition Laws, the multitude should have 
pressed about him, and borne him aloft in triumph upon their 
shoulders ; nor that Kentucky should have hastened to employ 
liira in her public business as soon as he was of the requisite age. 
At thirty he was, to use the language of the stump, " Kentucky's 
favorite son," and incomparably the finest orator in the Western 
country. Kentucky had tried him, and found him perfectly to 
her mind. He was an easy, comfortable man to associate with, 
wholly in the Jeffersonian taste. His wit was not of the highest 
quality, but he had plenty of it ; and if he said a good thing, he 
had such a way of saying it as gave it ten times its natural force. 
He chewed tobacco and took snuff, — practices which lowered 
the toue of his health all his life. In familiar conversation he 
used language of the most Western description ; and he had a 
singularly careless, graceful way with him, that was in strong 
contrast with the vigor and dignity of his public efforts. He was 
an honest and brave young man, altogether above lying, hypoc- 
risy, and meanness, — full of the idea of Republican America 
and her great destiny. The splendor of his talents concealed his 
defects and glorified his foibles ; and Kentucky rejoiced in him, 
loved him, trusted him, and sent him forth to represent her in the 
national council. 

During the first thirteen years of Henry Clay's active life as- a 
politician, — from his twenty-first to his thirty -fourth year, — he 
appears in politics only as the eloquent champion of the policy 
of Mr. Jefferson, Avhom he esteemed the first and best of livinjr 
men. After defending him on the stump and aiding him in 
the Kentucky Legislature, he was sent in 1806, when he was 
scarcely thirty, to fill for one term a seat in the Senate of the 
United States, made vacant by the resignation of one of the 
Kentucky Senators. Mr. Jefferson received his affectionate 
young disciple with cordiality, and admitted him to his confi- 

B 



18 HENRY CLAY. 

dence. Clay had been recently defending Burr before a Ken- 
tucky court, entirely believing that his designs were lawful and 
sanctioned. Mr. Jefferson showed hira the cipher letters of that 
mysterious and ill-starred adventurer, which convinced Mr. Clay 
that Burr was certainly a liar, if he was not a traitor. Mr. Jef- 
ferson's perplexity in 1806 was similar to that of Jackson in 
1833, — too mucli money in the treasury. The revenue then 
was fifteen millions ; and, after paying all the expenses of the 
government and the stipulated portion of the national debt, there 
was an obstinate and most embarrassing surplus. What to do 
with this irrepressible surplus was the question then discussed in 
Mr. Jefferson's Cabinet. The President, being a free-trader, 
would naturally have said. Reduce the duties. But the younger 
men of the party, who had no pet theories, and particularly our 
young Senator, who had just come in from a six weeks' horse- 
back flounder over bridgeless roads, urged another solution of 
the difficulty, — -Internal Improvements. But the President was 
a strict-constructionist, denied the authority of Congress to vote 
money for public works, and was fully committed to that 
opinion. 

Mr. Jefferson yielded. The most beautiful theories will not 
always endure the wear and tear of practice. The President, it 
is true, still maintained that an amendment to the Constitution 
ought to precede appropriations for public works ; but he said 
this very briefly and without emphasis, while he stated at some 
length, and with force, the desirableness of expending the surplus 
revenue in improving the country. As time wore on, less and 
less was said about the amendment, more and more about the im- 
portance of internal improvements ; until, at last,' the Hepublican 
party, under Clay, Adams, Calhoun, and Rush, went as far in 
this business of road-making and canal-digging as Hamilton him- 
self could have desired. Thus it was that Jefferson rendered 
true his own saying, " We are all Federalists, we are all Repub- 
licans." Jefferson yielded, also, on the question of free-trade. 
There is a passage of a few lines in Mr. Jefferson's Message of 
1806, the year of Henry Clay's first appearance in Washington, 
which may be regarded as the text of half the Kentuckian's 



HENRY CLAY. 19 

speeches, and the inspiration of his public life. The President is 
discussing the question, What shall we do with the surplus ? 

" Shall we suppress the impost, and give that advantage to 
foreign over domestic manufactures ? On a few articles of more 
general and necessary use, the suppression, in due season, will 
doubtless be right; but the great mass of the articles upon which 
impost is paid are foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who 
are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their 
patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance, and application 
to the great pur{)oses of the public education, roads, rivers, ca- 
nals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be 
thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of Fed- 
eral powers. By these operations, new channels of communica- 
tion will be opened between the States, the lines of separation 
will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union 
cemented by new and indissoluble bonds." 

Upon these hints, the young Senator delayed not to speak and 
act; nor did he wait for an amendment to the Constitution. His 
first speech in the Senate was in favor of building a bridge over 
the Potomac ; one of his first acts, to propose an appropriation of 
lands for a canal round the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville ; and 
soon he brought forward a resolution directing the Secretary of 
the Treasury to report a system of roads and canals for the con- 
sideration of Congress. The seed of the President's Message had 
fallen into good ground. 

Returning home at the end of the session, and re-entering the 
Kentucky Legislature, we still find him a strict follower of Mr. 
Jefferson. In support of the President's non-intercourse policy 
(which was Franklin's policy of 1775 applied to the circum- 
stances of 1808), Mr. Clay proposed that the members of the 
Legislature should bind themselves to wear nothing that was not 
of American manufacture. A Federalist, ignorant of the illus- 
trious origin of this idea, ignorant that the homespun system had 
caused the repeal of the Stamp Act, and ivould have postponed 
the Revolution but for the accident of Lexington, denounced Mr. 
Clay's proposition as the act of a shameless demagogue. Clay 
challenged this ill-informed gentleman, and a duel resulted, in 



20 HENEY CLAY. 

which two shots were exchanged, and both antagonists were 
slightly wounded. Elected again to the Senate for an unexpired 
terra, he reappeared in that body in 1809, and sat during two 
sessions. Homespun was again the theme of his speeches. His 
ideas on the subject of protecting and encouraging American 
manufactures were not derived from books, nor expressed in the 
language of political economy. At his own Kentucky home, 
Mrs. Clay, assisted by her servants, was spinning and weaving, 
knitting and sewing, most of the garments required in her little 
kingdom of six hundred acres, while her husband was away over 
the mountains serving his country. " Let the nation do what we 
Kentucky farmers are doing," said Mr. Clay to the Senate. 
" Let us manufacture enough to be independent of foreign nations 
in things essential, — no more." He discoursed on this subject 
in a very pleasant, humorous manner, without referring to the 
abstract principle involved, or employing any of the technical 
language of economists'. 

His service in the Senate during these two sessions enhanced 
his reputation greatly, and the galleries were filled when he was 
expected to speak, little known as he was to the nation at large. 
We have a glimpse of him in one of Washington Irving's letters 
of February, 1811: "Clay, from Kentucky, spoke against the 
Bank. He is one of the finest fellows I have seen here, and one 
of the finest orators in the Senate, though I believe the youngest 
man in it. The galleries, however, were so much crowded with 
ladies and gentlemen, and such expectations had been expressed 
concerning his speech, that he was completely frightened, and ac- 
quitted himself very little to his own satisfaction. He is a man 
I have great personal regard for." This was the anti-bank 
speech which General Jackson used to say had convinced him of 
the impolicy of a national bank, and which, with ingenious malice, 
he covertly quoted in making up his Bank Veto Message of 1832. 

Mr. Clay's public life proper began in November, 1811, when 
he appeared in Washington as a member of the House of Rep- 
resentatives, and was immediately elected Speaker by the war 
party, by the decisive majority of thirty-one. He was then 
thirty-four years of age. His election to the Speakership on his 



HENRY CLAY. 21 

first appearance in the House gave him, at once, national stand- 
ing. His master in pohtical doctrine and his partisan chief, 
Thomas Jefferson, was gone from the scene ; and Clay could now 
be a planet instead of a satellite. Restive as he had been under 
the arrogant aggressions of England, he had schooled himself to 
patient waiting, aided by Jefferson's benign sentiments and great 
example. But his voice was now for war; and such was the 
temper of the public in those months, that the eloquence of 
Henry Clay, seconded by the power of the Speaker, rendered the 
war unavoidable. 

It is agreed that to Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of 
Kepresentatives, more than to any other individual, we owe the 
war of 1812. When the House hesitated, it was he who, 
descending from the chair, spoke so as to reassure it. When 
President Madison faltered, it was the stimulus of Clay's 
resistless presence that put heart into him again. If the 
people seemed reluctant, it was Clay's trumpet harangues 
that fired their minds. And when the war was declared, 
it was he, more than President or Cabinet or War Com- 
mittee, that carried it along upon his shoulders. All our wars 
begin in disaster ; it was Clay who restored the country to con- 
fidence when it was disheartened by the loss of Detroit and its 
betrayed garrison. It was Clay alone who could encounter with- 
out flinching the acrid sarcasm of John Randolph, and exhibit 
the nothingness of his telling arguments. It was he alone who 
could adequately deal with Quincy of Massachusetts, who allud- 
ed to the Speaker and his friends as " young politicians, with their 
pin-feathers yet unshed, the shell still sticking upon them, — per- 
fectly unfledged, though they fluttered and cackled on the floor." 
Clay it was whose clarion notes rang out over departing regi- 
ments, and kindled within them the martial fire ; and it was 
Clay's speeches which the soldiers loved to read by the camp-fire. 
Fiery Jackson read them, and found them perfectly to his taste. 
Gentle Harrison read them to his Tippecanoe heroes. When the 
war was going all wrong in the first year. President Madison 
wished to appoint Clay Commander-in-Chief of the land forces ; 
but, said Gallatin, " What shall we do without him in the House 
of Representatives ? " 



22 HENRY CLAY. 

Henry Clay was not a man of blood. On the contrary, he was 
eminently pacific, both in his disposition and in his politics. Yet 
he believed in the war of 1812, and his whole heart was in it. 
The question occurs, then, Was it right and best for the United 
States to declare war against Great Britain in 1812? The 
proper answer to this question depends upon another : What 
ought we to think of Napoleon Bonaparte ? If Napoleon was, 
what English Tories and American Federalists said he was, the 
enemy of mankind, — and if England, in warring upon him, was 
fighting the battle of mankind, — then the injuries received by 
neutral nations might have been borne without dishonor. When 
those giant belligerents were hurling continents at one another, 
the damage done to bystanders from the flying off of fragments 
was a thing to be expected, and submitted to as their share of the 
general ruin, — to be compensated by the final suppression of the 
common foe. To have endured tliis, and even to have submitted, 
for a time, to the searching of ships, so that not one Englishman 
should be allowed to skulk from such a fight, had not been pusil- 
lanimity, but magnanimity. But if, as English Whigs and Amer- 
ican Democrats contended. Napoleon Bonaparte was the armed 
soldier of democracy, the rightful heir of the Revolution, the sole 
alternative to anarchy, the legitimate ruler of France ; if the 
responsibility of those enormous desolating wars does not lie at 
his door, but belongs to George III. and the Tory party of Eng- 
land ; if it is a fact that Napoleon always stood ready to make a 
just peace, which George HI. and William Pitt refused, not in 
the interest of mankind and civilization, but in that of the Tory 
party and the allied dynasties, — then America was right in 
resenting the searching and seizure of her ships, and right, after 
exhausting every peaceful expedient, in declaring war. 

That this was really the point in dispute between our two 
parties is shown in the debates, newspapers, and pamphlets of the 
time. The Federalists, as Mr. Clay observed in one of his 
speeches, compared Napoleon to " every monster and beast, from 
that mentioned in the Revelation down to the most insignificant 
quadruped." The Republicans, on the contrary, spoke of him 
always with moderation and decency, sometimes with commenda- 



HENRY CLAY. 23 

tion, and occasionally he was toasted at their pubhc dinners with 
enthusiasm. Mr. Clay himself, while lamenting his enormous 
power and the suspension of ancient nationalities, always had a 
lurking sympathy with him. " Bonaparte," said he in his great 
war speech of 1813, "has been called the scourge of mankind, 
the destroyer of Europe, the great robber, the infidel, the moderu 
Attila, and Heaven knows by what other names. Really, gentle- 
men remind me of an obscure lady, in a city not very far off, who 
also took it into her head, in conversation Avith an accomplished 
French gentleman, to talk of the affairs of Europe. She, too, 
spoke of the destruction of the balance of power ; stormed and 
raged about the insatiable ambition of the Emperor ; called him 
the curse of mankind, the destroyer of Europe. The French- 
man listened to her with perfect patience, and when she had 
ceased said to her, with ineffable politeness, ' Madam, it would 
give my master, the Emperor, infinite pain if he knew how hard- 
ly you thought of him.' " This brief passage suffices to show 
the prevailing tone of the two parties when Napoleon was the 
theme of discourse. 

It is, of course, impossible for us to enter into this question of 
Napoleon's moral position. Intelligent opinion, ever since the 
means of forming an opinion were accessible, has been constantly 
judging Napoleon more leniently, and the Tory party more 
severely. We can only say, that, in our opinion, the war of 1812 
was just and necessary ; and that Henry Clay, both in supporting 
Mr. Jefferson's policy of non-intercourse and in supporting Pres- 
ident Madison's policy of war, deserved well of his country. 
Postponed that war might have been. But, human nature being 
what it is, and the English government being what it was, we do 
not believe that the United States could ever have been distinctly 
recognized as one of the powei's of the earth without another 
fight for it. 

The war being ended and the Federal party extinct, upon the 
young Republicans, who had carried on the war, devolved the 
task of " reconstruction." Before they had made much pro- 
gress in it, they came within an ace of being consigned to pri- 
vate life, — Clay himself having as narrow an escape as any 
of them. 



24 HENRY CLAY. 

And here we may note one point of superiority of the Ameri- 
can government over others. In other countries it can some- 
times be the interest of politicians to foment and declare war. 
A war strengthens a tottering dynasty, an imperial parvemi, an 
odious tyrant, a feeble ministry ; and the glory won in battle on 
land and sea redounds to the credit of government, Avithout 
raising up competitors for its high places. But let American 
politicians take note. It is never their interest to bring on a 
war ; because a war is certain to generate a host of popular 
heroes to outshine them and push them from their places. It 
may sometimes be their duty to advocate war, but it is never 
their interest. At this moment we see both parties striving 
which shall present to the people the most attractive list of mil- 
itary candidates ; and when a busy ward politician seeks his 
reward in custom-house or department, he finds a dozen lame 
soldiei's competing for the place ; one of whom gets it, — as he 
ought. What city has presented Mr. Stanton with a house, or 
Mr. Welles with fifty thousand dollars' worth of government 
bonds ? Calhoun precipitated the country into a war with Mex- 
ico ; but what did he gain by it but new bitterness of disap- 
pointment, while the winner of three little battles was elected 
President ? Henry Clay was the animating soul of the war 
of 1812, and we honor him for it; but while Jackson, Brown, 
Scott, Perry, and Decatur came out of that war the idols of the 
nation, Clay was promptly notified that Ms footing in the public 
councils, Ms hold of the public favor, was by no means stable. 

His offence was that he voted for the compensation bill of 1816, 
which merely changed the pay of members of Congress from 
the pittance of six dollars a day to the pittance of fifteen hun- 
dred dollars a year. He who before was lord paramount 
in Kentucky saved his seat only by prodigious effbrts on the 
stump, and by exerting all the magic of his presence in the 
canvass. 

No one ever bore cutting disappointment with an airier grace 
than this high-spirited thorough-bred ; but he evidently felt this 
apparent injustice. Some years later, when it was proposed 
in Congress to pension Commodore Perry's mother, Mr. Clay, 



HENRY CLAY. 25 

in a speech of five minutes, totally extinguished the proposi- 
tion. Pointing to the vast rewards bestowed upon such success- 
ful soldiers as Marlborough, Napoleon, and Wellington, he said, 
with thrilling effect : " How different is the fate of the states- 
man ! In his quiet and less brilliant career, after having ad- 
vanced, by the wisdom of his measures, the national prosperity 
to the highest point of elevation, and after having sacrificed 
his fortune, his time, and perhaps his health, in the public ser- 
vice, what, too often, are the rewards that await him ? Who 
thinks of his family, impoverished by the devotion of his atten- 
tion to his country, instead of their advancement ? AVho pro- 
poses to pension him, — much less his mother ? " He spoke the 
more feelingly, because he, who could have earned more than 
the President's income by the practice of his profession, was 
often pinched for money, and was once obliged to leave Congress 
for the sole purpose of taking care of his shattered fortune. 
He felt the importance of this subject in a national point of view. 
He W'rote in 1817 to a friend : " Short as has been my service 
in the public councils, I have seen some of the most valuable 
members quitting the body from their inability to sustain the 
weight of these sacrifices. And in process of time, I appre- 
hend, this mischief will be more and more felt. Even now 
there are few, if any, instances of members dedicating their 
lives to the duties of legislation. Members stay a year or two ; 
curiosity is satisfied; the novelty wears off; expensive habits 
are brought or acquired ; their affairs at home are neglected ; 
their fortunes are wasting away ; and they are compelled to 
retire." 

The eight years of Mr. Monroe's administration — from 1817 
to 1825 — were the most brilliant period of Henry Clay's ca- 
reer. His position as Speaker of the House of Representatives 
would naturally have excluded him from leadership ; but the 
House was as fond of hearing him speak as he could be of speak- 
ing, and opportunities were continually furnished him by going 
into Committee of the Whole. In a certain sense he was in op- 
position to the administration. When one party has so frequent- 
ly and decidedly beaten the party opposed to it, that the defeated 



26 HENRY CLAY. 

party goes out of existence, the conquering party soon divides. 
The triumphant Republicans of 1816 obeyed this law of their 
position ; — one wing of the party, under Mr. Monroe, being re- 
luctant to depart from the old Jeffersonian policy ; the other 
wing, under Henry Clay, being inclined to go very far in internal 
improvements and a protective tariff. Mr. Clay now appears as 
the great champion of what he proudly styled the American Sys- 
tem. He departed farther and farther from the simple doctrines 
of the earlier Democrats. Before the war, he had opposed a 
national bank ; now he advocated the establishment of one, and 
handsomely acknowledged the change of opinion. Before the 
war, he proposed only such a tariff as would render America in- 
dependent of foreign nations in articles of the first necessity ; 
now he contemplated the establishment of a great manufacturing 
system, which should attract from Europe skilful workmen, and 
supply the people with everything they consumed, even to jewel- 
ry and silver-ware. Such success had he with his American 
System, that, before many years rolled away, we see the rival 
wings of the Republican party striving which could concede most 
to the manufacturers in the way of an increased tariff. Every 
four years, when a President was to be elected, there was an inev- 
itable revision of the tariff, each faction outbidding the other in 
conciliating the manufacturing interest ; until at length the near 
discharge of the national debt suddenly threw into politics a 
prospective surplus, — one of twelve millions a year, — which 
came near crushing the American System, and gave Mr. Calhoun 
his pretext for nullification. 

At present, with such a debt as we have, the tariff is no longer 
a question with us. The government must have its million a day ; 
and as no tax is less offensive to the people than a duty on im- 
ported commodities, we seem compelled to a practically protective 
system for many years to come. But, of all men, a citizen of the 
United States should be the very last to accept the protective 
system as final ; for when he looks abroad over the great assem- 
blage of sovereignties which he calls the United States, and asks 
himself the reason of their rapid and uniform prosperity for the 
last eighty years, what answer can he give but this ? — There is 



HENRY CLAY. 27 

free trade among them. And if he extends his survey over the 
whole earth, he can scarcely avoid the conclusion that free trade 
among all nations would be as advantageous to all nations as it is 
to the thirty-seven States of the American Union. But nations are 
not governed by theories and theorists, but by circumstances and 
politicians. The most perfect theory must sometimes give way to 
exceptional fact. We find, accordingly, Mr. Mill, the great 
English champion of free ti'ade, fully sustaining Henry Clay's 
moderate tariff of 1816, but sustaining it only as a temporary 
measure. The paragraph of Mr. Mill's Political Economy which 
touches this subject seems to us to express so exactly the true 
policy of the United States with regard to the tariiF, that we will 
take the liberty of quoting it. 

" The only case in which, on mere principles of political economy, 
protecting duties can be defensible, is when they are imposed tempora- 
rily, (especially in a young and rising nation,) in hopes of naturalizing 
a foreign industry, in itself perfectly suitable to the circumstances of 
the country. The superiority of one country over another in a branch 
of production often arises only fi-om having begun it sooner. There 
may be no inherent advantage on one part, or disadvantage on the 
other, but only a present superiority of acquired skill and experience. 
A country which has this skill and experience yet to acquire may, in 
other respects, be better adapted to the production than those which 
were earlier in the field ; and, besides, it is a just remark of Mr. Rae, 
that nothing has a greater tendency to promote improvement in any 
branch of production, than its trial under a new set of conditions. 
But it cannot be expected that individuals should, at their own risk, or 
rather to their certain loss, introduce a new manufacture, and bear the 
burden of carrying It on, until the producers have been educated up 
to the level of those with whom the processes are traditional. A pro- 
tecting duty, continued for a reasonable time, will sometimes be the 
least inconvenient mode in which the nation can tax itself for the sup- 
port of such an experiment. But the protection should be confined to 
cases in which there is good ground of assurance that the industry 
which it fosters will after a time be able to dispense with it ; nor 
should the domestic producers ever be allowed to eSpect that it will be 
continued to them beyond the time necessary for a fair trial of what 
they are capable of accompUshing." * 

* MiU's Principles of Political Economy, Book V. Ch. X. § 1. 



28 HENRY CLAY. 

In the quiet of his library at Ashland, Mr. Clay, we believe, 
would, at any period of his public life, have assented to the doc- 
trines of this passage. But at Washington he was a party leader 
and an orator. Having set the ball in motion, he could not stop 
it ; nor does he appear to have felt the necessity of stop^^ing it, 
until, in 1831, he was suddenly confronted by three Gorgons at 
once, — a coming Surplus, a President that vetoed internal im- 
provements, and an ambitious Calhoun, resolved on using the 
surplus either as a stepping-stone to the Presidency or a wedge 
with which to split the Union. Tlie time to have put down the 
brakes was in 1828, when the national debt was within seven 
years of being paid off; but precisely then it was that both divi- 
sions of the Democratic party — one under Mr. Van Buren, the 
other under Mr. Clay — were running a kind of tariff race, neck 
and neck, in which Van Buren won. Mr. Clay, it is true, was 
not in Congress then, — he was Secretary of State ; but he was 
the soul of his party, and his voice was the voice of a master. 
In all his letters and speeches there is not a word to show that he 
then anticipated the surplus, or the embarrassments to which it 
gave rise ; though he could not have forgotten that a very trifling 
surplus was one of the chief anxieties of Mr. Jefferson's admin- 
istration. Mr. Clay's error, we think, arose from his not per- 
ceiving clearly that a protective tariff, though justifiable some- 
times, is always in itself an evil, and is never to be accepted as 
the permanent policy of any country ;■ and that, being an evil, it 
must be reduced to the minimum that will answer the temporary 
purpose. 

In estimating Henry Clay, we are always to remember that he 
was an orator. He had a genius for oratory. There is, we be- 
lieve, no example of a man endowed with a genius for oratory who 
also possessed an understanding of the first order. Mr. Clay's 
oratory was vivified by a good heart and a genuine love of coun- 
try ; and on occasions which required only a good heart, patriotic 
feeling, and an eloquent tongue, he served his country well. But 
as a party leader he had sometimes to deal with matters which 
demanded a radical and far-seeing intellect ; and then, perhaps, 
he failed to guide his followers aright. At Washington, during 



HENRY CLAY. 29 

the thirteen years of his Speakership, he led the gay life of a 
popular hero and drawing-room favorite ; and his position was 
supposed to compel him to entertain much company. As a young 
lawyer in Kentucky, he was addicted to playing those games of 
mere chance which alone at that day were styled gambling. He 
played high and often, as was the custom then all over the world. 
It was his boast, even in those wild days, that he never played at 
home, and never had a pack of cards in his house ; but when the 
lawyers and judges were assembled during court sessions, there 
was much high play among them at the tavern after the day's 
work was done. In 1806, when Mr. Clay was elected to the 
Senate, he resolved to gamble no more, — that is, to play at haz- 
ard and " brag " no more, — and he kept his resolution. Whist, 
being a game depending partly on skill, was not included in this 
resolution ; and whist was thenceforth a very favorite game with 
him, and he greatly excelled in it. It was said of him, as it was 
of Charles James Fox, that, at any moment of a hand, he could 
name all the cards that remained to be played. He discounte- 
nanced high stakes ; and we believe he never, after 1806, played 
for more than five dollars " a corner." These, we know, were the 
stakes at Ghent, where he played whist for many months with 
the British Commissioners during the negotiations for peace in 
1815. We mention his w^hist-playing only as part of the evi- 
dence that he was a gay, pleasant, easy man of the world, — not 
a student, not a thinker, not a philosopher. Often, in reading 
over his speeches of this period, we are ready to exclaim, " Ah ! 
Mr. Clay, if you had played whist a little less, and studied history 
and statesmanship a great deal more, you would have avoided 
some errors ! " A trifling anecdote related by Mr. Colton lets us 
into the Speaker's way of life. " How can you preside over that 
House to-day ? " asked a friend, as he set Mr. Clay down at his 
own door, after sunrise, from a party. " Come up, and you shall 
see how I will throw the reins over their necks," replied the 
Speaker, as he stepped from the carriage.* 

* Daniel Webster once said of him in conversation : " Mr. Clay is a great 
man ; beyond all question a true patriot. He has done ranch for his coniitry. 
He onght long ago to have been elected President. I thinlt, however, he was 



80 HENRY CLAY. 

But when noble feelin"; and a shifted tongue sufficed for the 
occasion, how grandly sometimes he acquitted himself in those 
brilliant years, when, descending from the Speaker's lofty seat, 
he held the House and the crowded galleries spellbound by his 
magnificent oratory ! His speech of 1818, for example, favoring 
the recognition of the South American republics, was almost as 
wise as it was eloquent; for, although the provinces of South 
America are still far from being what we could wish them to be, 
yet it is certain that no single step of progress was possible for 
them until their connection with Spain was severed. Cuba, to- 
day, proves Mr. Clay's position. The amiable and intelligent 
Creoles of that beautiful island are nearly ready for the abolition 
of slavery and for regulated freedom ; but they lie languishing 
under the hated incubus of Spanish rule, and dare not risk a war 
of independence, outnumbered as they are by untamed or half- 
tamed Africans. Mr. Clay's speeches in behalf of the young 
republics of South America were I'ead by Bolivar at the head of 
his troops, and justly rendered his name dear to the struggling 
patriots. He had a clear conviction, like his master, Thomas 
Jefferson, that the interests of the United States lie chiefly in 
America, not Europe ; and it was a favorite dream of his to see 
the "Western Continent occupied by flourishing republics, inde- 
pendent, but closely allied, — a genuine Holy Alliance. 

The supreme effort of Mr. Clay's Congressional life was in 
connection with the Missouri Compromise of 1821. He did not 
originate the plan of compromise, but it was certainly his influ- 
ence and tact which caused the plan to prevail. Fortunate!}^, 
he had been absent from Concress during some of the earlier 

never a man of bookf?, a hard student; but he has displayed remarkable 
genius. I never could imagine him sitting comfortably in his library, and read- 
ing quietly out of the great books of the past. He has been too fond of the 
world to enjoy anything like that. He has been too fond of excitement, — he 
has lived upon it; he has been too fond of company, not enough alone; and has 
had few resources within himself. Now a man who cannot, to some extent, 
depend upon himself for happiness, is to my mind one of the unfortunate. But 
Clay is a great man; and if he ever had animosities against me, I forgive him 
and forget them." 

These words were uttered at Marshfield when the news reached there that Mr. 
Clay was dying. 



HENRY CLAY. 31 

attempts to admit Missouri ; and thus he arrived in Washington 
in January, 1821, calm, uncommitted, and welcome to both par- 
ties. Fierce debate had wrought up the minds of members to 
that point where useful discussion ceases to be possible. Almost 
every man had given personal offence and taken personal offence; 
the two sides seemed reduced to the most hopeless incompatibil- 
ity ; and the affair was at a dead lock. No matter what the sub- 
ject of debate, Missouri was sure, in some way, to get involved 
in it ; and the mere mention of the name was like a spark upon 
loose gunpowder. In Februaiy, for example, the House had to 
go through the ceremony of counting the votes for President of 
the United States, — a mere ceremony, since Mr. Monroe had 
been re-elected almost unanimously, and the votes of Missouri 
were of no importance. The tellers, to avoid giving cause of 
contention, announced that Mr. Monroe had received two hun- 
dred and thirty-one votes, including those of Missouri, and two 
hundred and twenty-eight if they were excluded. At this an- 
nouncement members sprang to their feet, and such a scene of 
confusion arose that no man could make himself heard. After a 
long struggle with the riot, the Speaker declared the House ad- 
journed. 

For six weeks Mr. Clay exerted his eloquence, his ai-ts of 
pacification, and all the might of his personality, to bring mem- 
bers to their senses. He even had a long conference with his 
ancient foe, John Randolph. He threw himself into this work 
with such ardor, and labored at it so continuously, day and 
night, that, when the final triumph was won, he declared that, 
if Missouri had been kept out of the Union two weeks longer, 
he should have been a dead man. Thirty-four years after these 
events Mr. S. G. Goodrich wrote : " I was in the House of Rep- 
resentatives but a single hour. While I was present there was 
no direct discussion of the agitating subject which already filled 
everybody's mind, but still the excitement flared out occasionally 
in incidental allusions to it, like puffs of smoke and jets of flame 
Avhich issue from a house that is on fire within. I recollect that 
Clay made a brief speech, thrilling the House by a single pas- 
sage, in which he spoke of ^ poor, unheard Missowi,' she being 



32 HENRY CLAY. 

then without a representative in Congress. His tall, tossing 
form, his long, sweeping gestures, and, above all, his musical yet 
thrilling tones, made an impression upon me which I can never 
forget." 

Mr. Clay, at length, had completed his preparations. He 
moved for a committee of the House to confer with a committee 
of the Senate. He himself wrote out the list of members whom 
he desired should be elected, and they were elected. At the last 
conference of the joint committees, which was held on a Sunday, 
Mr. Clay insisted that their report, to have the requisite effect 
upon Congress and the country, must be unanimous ; and unan- 
imous it was. Both Houses, with a surprising approach to 
unanimity, adopted the compromise proposed ; and thus was 
again postponed the bloody arbitrament to which the irrepres- 
sible controversy has since been submitted. 

Clay's masterly conduct on this occasion added his name to 
the long list of gentlemen who were mentioned for the succes- 
sion to Mr. Monroe in 1825. If the city of Washington had 
been the United States, if the House of Representatives had 
possessed the right to elect a President, Henry Clay might have 
been its choice. During the thirteen years of his Speakership 
not one of his decisions had been reversed ; and he had presided 
over the turbulent and restive House with that perfect blending 
of courtesy and firmness which at once restrains and charms. 
The debates just before the war, during the war, and after the 
vv'ar, had been violent and acrimonious ; but he had kept his own 
temper, and compelled the House to observe an approach to de- 
corum. On one occasion he came into such sharp collision with the 
excitable Randolph, that the dispute was transferred to the news- 
papers, and narrow'ly escaped degenerating from a war of "cards" 
to a conflict with pistols. But the Speaker triumphed ; the 
House and the country sustained him. On occasions of cere- 
mony the Speaker enchanted every beholder by the superb dig- 
nity of his bearing, the fitness of his words, and the tranquil 
depth of his tones. What could be more eloquent, more appro- 
priate, than the Speaker's address of welcome to Lafayette, when 
the guest of the nation was conducted to the floor of the House 



HENRY CLAY. , 33 

of Representatives ? The House and the galleries were proud 
of the Speaker that day. No one who never hoard this captiva- 
tor of hearts can form the slightest conception of the penetrating 
effect of the closing sentences, though they were spoken only in 
the tone of conversation. 

" The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that Providence 
would allow the patriot, after death, to return to his country, and to 
contemplate the intermediate changes which had taken place ; to view 
the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals 
cut, the highways constructed, the progress of the arts, the advance- 
ment of learning, and the increase of population. General, your pres- 
ent visit to the United States is a realization of the consoling object of 
that wish. You are in the midst of posterity. EverjTvhere you must 
have been struck with the great changes, physical and moral, which 
have occurred since you left us. Even this very city, bearing a vener- 
ated name, alike endeared to you and to us, has since emerged from 
the forest which then covered its site. In one respect you behold us 
unaltered, and this Is in the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, 
and of ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend, 
the father of his country, and to you, and to your illustrious associates 
in the field and in the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which sur- 
round us, and for the very privilege of addressing you which I now 
exercise. This sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten 
milUons of people, will be transmitted with unabated vigor down the 
tide of time, through the countless millions who are destined to Inhabit 
this continent, to the latest posterity." 

The appropriateness of these sentiments to the occasion and 
to the man is evident to every one who remembers that Lafay- 
ette's love of George "Washington was a Frenchman's romantic 
passion. Nor, indeed, did he need to have a sensitive French 
heart to be moved to tears by such words and such a welcome. 

From 1822 to 1848, a period of twenty-six years, Henry Clay 
lived the strange life of a candidate for the Presidency. It was 
enough to ruin any man, body and soul. To live always in the 
gaze of millions ; to be the object of eulogy the most extrava- 
gant and incessant from one half of the newspapers, and of vitu- 
peration still more preposterous from the other half; to be sur- 
rounded by flatterers interested and disinterested, and to bo 
2* c 



34 HENRY CLAY. 

confronted by anothei* body intent on misrepresenting every 
act and word ; to have to stop and consider the effect of every 
utterance, public and private, upon the next " campaign " ; not 
to be able to stir abroad without having to harangue a depu- 
tation of political friends, and stand to be kissed by ladies and 
pump-handled by men, and hide the enormous bore of it beneath 
a fixed smile till the very muscles of the face are rigid ; to receive 
by every mail letters enough for a large town ; to have your life 
written several times a year ; to be obliged continually to refute 
calumnies and " define your position " ; to live under a horrid 
necessity to be pointedly civil to all the world ; to find your most 
casual remarks and most private conversations getting distorted 
in print, — this, and more than this, it was to be a candidate for 
the Presidency. The most wonderful thing that we have to say 
of Henry Clay is, that, such were his native sincerity and health- 
fulness of mind, he came out of this fiery trial still a patriot and 
a man of honor. We believe it was a weakness in him, as it is in 
any man, to set his heai't upon living four years in the White 
House ; but we can most confidently say, that, having entered the 
game, he played it fairly, and bore his repeated disappointments 
with genuine, high-bred composure. The closest scrutiny into the 
life of this man still permits us to believe that, when he said, " I 
would rather be right than be President," he spoke the real senti- 
ments of his heart ; and that, when he said to one of his political 
opponents, " Tell General Jackson that, if he will sign my Land 
Bill, I will pledge myself to retire from public life and never to 
re-enter it," he meant what he said, and would have stood to it. 
It is our privilege to believe this of Henry Clay ; nor do we 
think that there was ever anything morbidly excessive in his 
desire for the Presidency. He was the head and choice of a 
great political party ; in the principles of that party he fully 
believed ; and we think he did truly desire an election to the 
Presidency more from conviction than ambition. This may not 
have been the case in 1824, but we beHeve it was in 1832 and 
in 1844. 

The history of Henry Clay's Presidential aspirations and de- 
feats is little more than the history of a personal feud. In the 



HENRY CLAY. 35 

year 1819, it was liis fortune to incur the hatred of the best 
hater then living, — Andrew Jackson. They met for the first 
time in November, 1815, when the hero of New Orleans came 
to Washington to consult with the administration respecting the 
Indian and military affairs of his department. Each of these 
eminent men truly admired the other. Jackson saw in Clay the 
civil hero of the war, whose fiery eloquence had powerfully 
seconded its military heroes. Clay beheld in Jackson the man 
whose gallantry and skill had done most to justify the war in the 
sight of the people. They became immediately and cordially in- 
timate. Jackson eng-asred to visit Ashland in the course of the 
next summer, and spend a week there. On every occasion when 
Mr. Clay spoke of the heroes of the war, he bestowed on Jackson 
the warmest praise. 

In 1818 General Jackson invaded Florida, put to death two 
Indian chiefs in cold blood, and executed two British subjects, 
Arbuthnot and Armbrister.* During the twenty-seven days' 
debate upon these proceedings, in 1819, the Speaker sided with 
those who disapproved them, and he delivered a set speech 
against Jackson. This speech, though it did full justice to Gen- 
eral Jackson's motives, and contained a fine eulogium upon his 
previous services, gave the General deadly offence. Such was 
Jackson's self-love that he could not believe in the honesty ot' 
any opposition to him, but invariably attributed such opposition 
to low personal motives. Now it was a fact well known to Jack- 
son, that Henry Clay had expected the appointment of Secretary 
of State under Mr. Monroe ; and it was part of the gossip of the 
time that Mr. Monroe's preference of Mr. Adams was the reason 
of Clay's occasional opposition to measures favored by the ad- 
ministration. "We do not believe this, because the measures 
which Mr. Clay opposed were such as he must have disapproved, 
and which well-informed posterity will forever disapprove. Af- 
ter much debate in the Cabinet, Mr. Monroe, who was peculiarly 
bound to Jackson, and who had reasons of his own for not offend- 
ing him, determined to sustain him w toto, both at home and in 

* This is the correct spelhng of the name, as we learn from a living relative 
of the unfortunate man. It has been hitherto spelled Ambrister. 



36 HENRY CLAY. 

the courts of Spain and England. Hence, in condemning Gen- 
eral Jackson, Mr. Clay was again in opposition to the adminis- 
tration ; and the General of course concluded, that the Speaker- 
designed, in ruining him, merely to further his own political 
schemes. How he boiled with fury against Mr. Clay, his pub- 
lished letters amusingly attest. " The hypocrisy and baseness of 
Clay," wrote the General, " in pretending friendship to me, and 
endeavoring to crush the Executive through me, makes me de- 
spise the villain." 

Jackson, as we all know, was ti'iumphantly sustained by the 
House. In fact, Mr. Clay's speech was totally unworthy of the 
occasion. Instead of argument and fact, he gave the House and 
the galleries beautiful declamation. The evidence was before 
him ; he had it in his hands ; but, instead of getting up his case 
with patient assiduity, and exhibiting the damning proofs of Jack- 
son's misconduct, he merely glanced over the mass of papers, fell 
into some enormous blunders, passed over some most material 
points, and then endeavored to supply all deficiencies by an im- 
posing eloquence. He even acknowledges that he had not ex- 
amined the testimony. " It is possible" said he, " that a critical 
examination of the evidence would show " that Ai'buthnot was an 
innocent trader. We have had occasion to examine that evidence 
since, and we can testify that this conjecture was correct. But 
why was it a conjecture ? Why did Mr. Clay neglect to convert 
the conjecture into certainty ? It fell to him, as representing the 
civilization and humanity of the United States, to vindicate the 
memory of an honorable old man, who had done all that was 
possible to prevent the war, and who had been ruthlessly mur- 
dered by men wearing the uniform of American soldiers. It fell 
to him to bar the further advancement of a man most unfit for 
civil rule. To this duty he was imperatively called, but he 
only half did it, and thus exasperated the tiger without disabling 
him. 

Four years passed. In December, 1823, General Jackson re- 
appeared in Washington to take his seat in the Senate, to which 
he had been elected by his wire-pullers for the purpose of pro- 
moting his interests as a candidate for the Presidency. Before 



HENRY CLAY. 37 

he left home two or three of his friends had besought him to 
assume a mild and conciliatory demeanor at the capitol. It would 
never do, they told him, for a candidate for the Presidency to 
threaten to cut off the ears of gentlemen who disapproved his 
public conduct ; he must restrain himself and make friends. 
This advice he followed. He was reconciled with General Win- 
field Scott, whom, in 1817, he had styled an " assassin," a " hector- 
ing bully," and an " intermeddling pimp and spy of the War Of- 
fice." He made friends with Colonel Thomas H. Benton, with 
whom he had fought in the streets of Nashville, while he still 
carried in his body a bullet received in that bloody affray. With 
Henry Clay, too, he resumed friendly intercourse, met him twice 
at dinner-parties, rode and exchanged visits with him, and attend- 
ed one of the Speaker's Congressional dinners. 

When next these party chieftains met, in the spring of 1825, it 
was about to devolve upon the House of Representatives to de- 
cide which of three men should be the next President, — Jack- 
son, Adams, or Crawford. They exchanged visits as before ; JVIr. 
Clay being desirous, as he said, to show General Jackson that, in 
the vote which he had determined to give, he was influenced only 
by public considerations. No reader needs to be informed that 
Mr. Clay and his friends were able to decide the election, and 
that they decided it in favor of Mr. Adams. We believe that 
Mr. Clay was wrong in so doing. As a Democrat he ought, we 
think, to have been willing to gratify the plurality of his fellow- 
citizens, who had voted for General Jackson. His motives we 
fully believe to have been disinterested. Indeed, it was plainly 
intimated to him that, if he gave the Presidency to General 
Jackson, General Jackson would make him his heir apparent, or, 
in other words, his Secretary of State. 

The anger of General Jackson at his disappointment was not 
the blind and wild fury of his earlier days ; it was a deeper, a 
deadlier wrath, which he governed and concealed in order to 
wreak a feller vengeance. On the evening of the day on which 
the election in the House occurred there was a levee at the 
Presidential mansion, which General Jackson attended. Who, 
that saw him dart forward and grasp Mr. Adams cordially by the 



38 HENRY CLAY. 

hand, could have supposed that he then entirely believed that 
Mr. Adams had stolen the Presidency from him by a corrupt 
bargain with Mr. Clay ? Who could have supposed that he and 
his friends had been, for fourteen days, hatching a plot to blast 
the good name of Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, by spreading abroad 
the base insinuation that Clay had been bought over to the sup- 
port of Adams by the promise of the first place in the Cabinet ? 
Who could have supposed that, on his way home to Tennessee, 
while the newspapers were paragraphing his magnanimity in de- 
feat, as shown by his behavior at the levee, he would denounce 
Adams and Clay, in bar-rooms and public places, as guilty of a 
foul compact to frustrate the wishes of the people ? 

It was calumny's masterpiece. It was a rare stroke of art to 
get an old dotard of a member of Congress to publish, twelve 
days before the election, that Mr. Clay had agreed to vote for Mr. 
Adams, and that Mr. Adams had agreed to reward him by the 
office of Secretary of State. When the vote had been given and 
the office conferred, how plausible, how convincing, the charge of 
bargain ! 

It is common to censure Mr. Clay for accepting office under 
Mr. Adams. We honor him for his courage in doing so. Hav- 
ing made Mr. Adams President, it had been unlike the gallant 
Kentuckian to shrink from the possible odium of the act by re- 
fusing his proper place in the administration. The calumny 
which anticipated his acceptance of office was a defiance : Tahe 
office if you dare! It was simply worthy of Henry Clay to accept 
the challenge, and brave all the consequences of what he had de- 
liberately and conscientiously done. 

In the office of Secretary of State Mr. Clay exhibited an ad- 
mirable talent for the despatch of business. He negotiated an 
unusual number of useful treaties. He exerted himself to secure 
a recognition of the principles, that, in time of war, private 
property should enjoy on the ocean the same protection as on 
land, and that paper blockades are not to be regarded. He 
seconded Mr. Adams in his determination not to remove from 
office any man on account of his previous or present opposition 
to the administration ; and he carried this policy so far, that, in 



HENRY CLAY. 39 

selecting the newspapers for the pubhcation of the laws, he re- 
fused to consider their pohtical character. This was in strict 
accordance witli the practice of all previous administrations ; but 
it is so pleasant to recur to the times when that honorable policy 
prevailed, that we cannot help alluding to it. In his intercourse 
Avith foreign ministers, Mr. Clay had an opportunity to display 
all the charms of an unequalled courtesy : they remained his 
friends long after he had retired. His Wednesday dinners and 
his pleasant evening receptions were remembered for many years. 
How far he sympathized with Mr. Adams's extravagant dreams 
of a system of national works that should rival the magnificent 
structures of ancient Rome, or with the extreme opinions of his 
colleague, Mr. Rush, as to the power and importance of govern- 
ment, we do not know. He worked twelve hours a day in his 
office, he tells us, and was content therewith. lie was the last 
liigh officer of the government to fight a duel. That bloodless 
contest between the Secretary of State and John Randolph was 
as romantic and absurd as a duel could well be. Colonel Ben- 
ton's narrative of it is at once the most amusing and the most 
affecting piece of gossip which our political annals contain. 
Randolph, as the most unmanageable of members of Congress, 
had been for fifteen years a thorn in Mr. Clay's side, and Clay's 
later politics had been most exasperating to Mr. Randolph ; but 
the two men loved one another in their hearts, after all. Noth- 
ing has ever exceeded the thorough-bred courtesy and tender 
consideration with which they set about the work of putting one 
another to death ; and their joy was unbounded when, after the 
second fire, each discovered that the other was unharmed. If 
all duels could have such a result, duelHng would be the prettiest 
tliins; in the world. 

The election of 1828 swept the administration from power. 
No man has ever bowed more gracefully to the decision of the 
people than Henry Clay. His remarks at the public dinner 
given him in Washington, on his leaving for home, were entirely 
admirable. Andrew Jackson, he said, had wronged him, but he 
was now the Chief Magistrate of his country, and, as such, he 
should be treated with decorum, and his public acts judged with 



40 HENRY CLAY. 

candor. His journey to Ashland was more like the progress of 
a victor than the return homeward of a rejected statesman. 

He now entered largely into his fovorite branch of rural busi- 
ness, the raising of superior animals. Fifty merino sheep were 
driven over the mountains from Pennsylvania to his farm, and 
he imported from England some Durham and Hertford cattle. 
He had an Arabian horse in his stable. For the improvement 
of the breed of mules, he imported an ass from Malta, and an- 
other from Spain. Pigs, goats, and dogs he also raised, and 
endeavored to improve. His slaves being about fifty in number, 
he was able to carry on the raising of hemp and corn, as well as 
the breeding of stock, and both on a considerable scale. Mrs. 
Clay sent every morning to the principal hotel of Lexington 
thirty gallons of milk, and her husband had large consignments 
to make to his factor in New Orleans. His letters of this period 
show how he delighted in his animals and his growing crops, and 
how thoughtfully he considered the most trifling details of man- 
agement. His health improved. He told his old friend, Yv^ash- 
ington Irving, that he found it was as good for men as for beasts 
to be turned out to grass occasionally. Though not without 
domestic afflictions, he was very happy in his home. One of his 
sons graduated second at "West Point, and two of his daughters 
were happily married. He was, perhaps, a too indulgent father; 
but his children loved him most tenderly, and were guided by his 
opinion. It is pleasing to read in the letters of his sons to him 
such passages as this : " You tell me that you wish me to receive 
your opinions, not as commands, but as advice. Y'et I must con- 
sider them as commands, doubly binding ; for they proceed from 
one so vastly my superior in all respects, and to whom I am un- 
der such great obligations, that the mere intimation of an opinion 
will be sufficient to govern my conduct." 

The President, meanwhile, was paying such homage to the 
farmer of Ashland as no President of the United States had ever 
paid to a private individual. General Jackson's principal object 
— the object nearest his heart — appears to have been to wound 
and injure Henry Clay. His appointments, his measures, and his 
vetoes seem to have been chiefly inspired by resentment against 



HENRY CLAY. 41 

him. Ingham of Pennsylvania, who had taken the lead in that 
State in giving currency to the " bargain " calumny, was appoint- 
ed Secretary of the Treasury. Eaton, who bad aided in the 
original concoction of that foul slander, was appointed Secretary 
of War. Branch, wdio received the appointment of Secretary of 
the Navy, was one of the few Senators who had voted and spok- 
'en against the confirmation of Henry Clay to the office of Secre- 
tary of State in 1825 ; and Berrien, Attorney- General, was 
another. Barry, appointed Postmaster-General, was the Ken- 
tuckian who had done most to intlict upon Mr. Clay the mortifi- 
cation of seeing his own Kentucky siding against him. John 
Randolph, Clay's recent antagonist in a duel, and the most unfit 
man in the world for a diplomatic mission, was sent Minister to 
Russia. Pope, an old Kentucky Federalist, Clay's opponent and 
competitor for half a lifetime, received the appointment of Gov- 
ernor of the Territory of Arkansas. General Harrison, who had 
generously defended Clay against the charge of bargain and cox*- 
ruption, was recalled from a foreign mission on the fourth day 
after General Jackson's accession to power, though he had scarce- 
ly reached the country to Avhich he was accredited. In the place 
of General Harrison was sent a Kentuckian peculiarly obnoxious 
to Mr. Cla}'. In Kentucky itself there was a clean sw'eep from 
office of Mr. Clay's friends ; not one man of them was left. His 
brother-in-law, James Brown, was instantly recalled from a diplo- 
matic post in Europe. Kendall, the chief of the Kitchen Cab- 
inet, had once been tutor to Mr. Clay's children, and had won the 
favor of Jackson by lending a dexterous hand in carrying Kentucky 
against his benefactor. Francis Blair, editor of the Globe, had 
also been the particular friend and coi-respondent of Mr. Clay, 
but had turned against him. From the Departments in Wash- 
ington, all of Mr. Clay's known friends were immediately 
removed, except a few who had made themselves indispensable, 
and a few others whom Mr. Van Buren contrived to spare. 
In nearly every instance, the men who succeeded to the best 
places had made themselves conspicuous by their vituperation of 
Mr. Clay. He was strictly correct when he said, " Every move- 
ment of the President is dictated by personal hostility toward 



42 . HENRY CLAY. 

me " ; but he was deceived when he added that it all conduced to 
his benefit. Every mind that was both just and well-informed 
warmed toward the object of such pitiless and demoniac wrath ; 
but in what land are minds just and well-informed a majority ? 

It was not only the appointments and removals that were aimed 
at Mr. Clay. The sudden expulsion of gray hairs from the offi- 
ces they had honored, the precipitation of hundreds of families ' 
into poverty, — this did not satisfy the President's vengeance. 
He assailed Henry Clay in his first Message. In recommending 
a change in the mode of electing the President, he said that, 
when the election devolves upon the House of Representatives, 
circumstances may give the power of deciding the election to one 
man. " May he not be tempted," added the President, " to name 
his reward ? " He vetoed appropriations for the Cumberland 
Road, because the name and the honor of Henry Clay were pe- 
culiarly identified with that work. He destroyed the Bank of 
the United States, because he believed its power and influence 
were to be used in favor of Mr. Clay's elevation to the Presiden- 
cy. He took cai'e, in his Message vetoing the recharter of the 
Bank, to employ some of the arguments which Clay had used in 
opposing the recharter of the United States Bank in 1811. Mis- 
erably sick and infirm as he was, he consented to stand for re- 
election, because there was no other candidate strong enough to 
defeat Henry Clay ; and he employed all his art, and the whole 
power of the administration, during his second term, to smooth 
Mr. Van Buren's path to the Presidency, to the exclusion of 
Henry Clay. Plans were formed, too, and engagements made, 
the grand object of which was to keep Clay from the Presi- 
dency, even after Mr. Van Buren should have served his 
anticipated eight years. General Jackson left "Washington in 
1837, expecting that Martin Van Buren would be President until 
1845, and that he would then be succeeded by Thomas H. Ben- 
ton. Nothing prevented the fulfilment of this programme but 
the financial collapse of 1837, the effects of which continued 
during the whole of Mr. Van Buren's term, and caused his de- 
feat in 1840. 

Mr. Clay accepted the defiance implied in General Jackson's 



HENRY CLAY. 43 

conduct. He reappeared in Washington in 1831, in the charac- 
ter of Senator and candidate for the Presidency. His journey to 
Washington was again a triumphal progress, and again the gal- 
leries were crowded to hear him speak. A great and brilliant 
party gathered round him, strong in talents, character, property, 
and supposed to be strong in numbers. He at once proved him- 
self to be a most unskilful party leader. Every movement of his 
in that character was a mistake. He was precipitate when he 
ought to have been cautious, and cautious when nothing but 
audacity could have availed. The first subject upon which he 
was called upon to act was the tariff. The national debt being 
within two or three years of liquidation, Calhoun threatening nul- 
lification, and Jackson vetoing all internal improvement bills, it 
was necessary to provide against an enormous surplus. Clay 
maintained that the protective duties should remain intact, and 
that only those duties should be reduced which protected no 
American interest. This was done ; the revenue was reduced 
three millions ; and the surplus was as threatening as before. It 
was impossible to save the protective duties entire without raising 
too much revenue. Mr. Clay, as it seems to us, should have 
plainly said this to the manufacturers, and compelled his party in 
Congress to warn and save them by making a judicious cut 
at the protective duties in 1832. This would have deprived Cal- 
houn of his pretext, and prepared the way for a safe and gradual 
reduction of duties in the years following. Such was the pros- 
perity of the country in 1832, that the three millions lost to the 
revenue by Mr. Clay's bill were likely to be made up to it in 
three years by the mere increase in the imports and land sales. 

Mr. Clay's next misstep was one of precipitation. General 
Jackson, after a three years' war upon the Bank, was alarmed at 
the outcry of its friends, and sincerely desired to make peace 
with it. We know, from the avowals of the men who stood near- 
est his person at the time, that he not only wished to keep the 
Bank question out of the Presidential campaign of 1832, but that 
he was willing to consent, on very easy conditions, to a recharter. 
It was Mr. Clay's commanding influence that induced the direc- 
tors of the Bank to press for a recharter in 1832, and force the 



44 HENRY CLAY. 

President to retraction or a veto. So ignorant was this able and 
high-minded man of human nature and of the American people, 
that he supposed a popular enthusiasm could be kindled in behalf 
of a hank/ Such was the infatuation of some of his friends, that 
they went to the expense of circulating copies of the veto message 
gratis, for the purpose of lessening the vote for its author ! Mr. 
Clay was ludicrously deceived as to his strength with the masses, 
of the people, — the dumb masses, — those who have no eloquent 
orators, no leading newspapers, no brilliant pamphleteers, to speak 
for them, but who assert themselves with decisive effect on elec- 
tion day. 

It was another capital error in Mr. Clay, as the leader of a 
party, to run at all against General Jackson. He should have 
hoarded his prestige for 1836, when the magical name of Jackson 
would no longer captivate the ignorant voter. Mr. Clay's defeat 
in 1832, so unexpected, so overwhelming, lamed him for life as a 
candidate for the Presidency. He lost faith in his star. In 1836, 
when there was a chance of success, — just a chance, — he would 
not suffer his name to appear in the canvass. The vote of the 
opposition was divided among three candidates, — General Har- 
rison, Hugh L. "White, and Daniel Webster ; and Mr. Van Buren, 
of course, had an easy victory. Fortunately for his own happi- 
ness, Mr. Clay's desire for the Presidency diminished as his 
chances of reaching it diminished. That desire had never been 
morbid, it now became exceedingly moderate ; nor do we believe 
that, after his crushing defeat of 1832, he ever had much expec- 
tation of winning the prize. He knew too well the arts by which 
success is assured, to believe that an honorable man could be 
elected to the Presidency by honorable means only. 

Three other attempts were made to raise him to the highest 
office, and it was always Andrew Jackson who struck him down. 
In 1840, he was set aside by his party, and General Harrison 
nominated in his stead. This was Jackson's doing ; for it was 
the great defeat of 1832 which had robbed Clay of prestige, and it 
was General Jackson's uniform success that suggested the selec- 
tion of a military candidate. Again, in 1844, when the Texas 
issue was presented to the people, it was by the adroit use of 



HENRY CLAY. 45 

General Jackson's name that the question of annexation was pre- 
cipitated upon the country. In 1848, a military man was again 
nominated, to the exclusion of Henry Clay. 

Mr. Clay used to boast of his consistency, averring that he had 
never changed his opinion upon a public question but once. We 
think he was much too consistent. A notable example of an ex- 
cessive consistency was his adhering to the project of a United 
States Bank, when there was scarcely a possibility of establishing 
one, and his too steadfast opposition to the harmless expedient of 
the Sub-treasury. The Sub-treasury system has now been in 
operation for a quarter of a century. Call it a bungling and an- 
tiquated system, if you will ; it has nevertheless answered its 
purpose. The public money is taken out of politics. If the few 
miUions lying idle in the " Strong Box " do no good, they at least 
do no harm ; and we have no overshadowing national bank to 
compete with private capital, and to furnish, every few years, a 
theme for demagogues. Mr. Clay saw in the Sub-treasury the 
ruin of the Republic. In his great speech of 1838, in opposition 
to it, he uttered, in his most solemn and impressive manner, the 
following words : — 

" Mr. President, a great, novel, and untried measure is perseveringly 
urged upon the acceptance of Congress. That it is pregnant with tre- 
mendous consequences, for good or evil, is undeniable, and admitted 
by all. We firmly believe that it will be fatal to the best interests of 
this country, and idlirnately subversive of its liberties." 

No one acquainted with Mr. Clay, and no man, himself sin- 
cere, who reads this eloquent and most labored speech, can doubt 
Mr. Clay's sincerity. Observe the awful solemnity of his first 
sentences : — 

"I have seen some public service, passed through many troubled 
times, and often addressed pubhc assembhes, in this Capitol and else- 
where ; but never before have I risen in a deliberative body under 
more oppressed feelings, or with a deeper sense of awful responsibility. 
Never before have I risen to express my opinions ujion any public 
measure fraught with such tremendous consequences to the welfare and 
prosperity of the country, and so perilous to the liberties of the people, 
as I solemnly believe the bill under consideration will be. If you 



46 HENRY CLAY. 

knew, sir, what sleepless hours reflection upon it has cost me, if you 
knew with what fervor and sincerity I have imjilored Divine assistance 
to strengthen and sustain me in my opposition to it, I should have 
credit with you, at least, for the sincerity of my convictions, if I shall 
be so unfortunate as not to have your concurrence as to the dangerous 
character of the measure. And I have thanked my God that he has 
prolonged my life until the present time, to enable me to exert myself, 
in the service of my country, against a project far transcending in per- 
nicious tendency any that I have ever had occasion to consider. I 
thank him for the health I am permitted to enjoy ; I thank him for the 
soft and sweet repose which I experienced last night ; I thank him for 
the bright and glorious sun which shines upon us this day." 

And what was the question at issue? It was whether Nicholas 
Biddle should have the custody of the public money at Philadel- 
phia, and use the average balance in discounting notes ; or 
whether Mr. Cisco sjiould keep it at New York in an exceed- 
ingly strong vault, and not use any of it in discounting notes. 

As the leader of a national party Mr. Clay faile.d utterly ; for 
he was neither bad enough to succeed by foul means, nor skilful 
enough to succeed by fair means. But in his character of 
patriot, orator, or statesman, he had some brilliant successes in 
his later years. When Jackson was ready to concede all to the 
Nullifiers, and that suddenly, to the total ruin of the protected 
manufacturers, it was Clay's tact, parliamentary experience, and 
personal power that interposed the compromise tariff, which re- 
duced duties gradually instead of suddenly. The Compromise 
of 1850, also, which postponed the Rebellion ten years, was 
chiefly his work. That Compromise was the best then attain- 
able ; and we think that the country owes gratitude to the man 
who deferred the Rebellion to a time when the United States 
was strong enough to subdue it. 

Posterity, however, will read the speeches of Mr. Clay upon 
the various slavery questions agitated from 1835 to 1850 with 
mingled feelings of admiration and regret. A man compelled 
to live in the midst of slavery must hate it and actively oppose it, 
or else be, in some degree, corrupted by it. As Thomas Jeffer- 
son came at length to acquiesce in slavery, and live contentedly 
with it, so did Henry Clay lose some of his early horror of the 



HENRY CLAY. 47 

system, and accept it as a necessity. True, he never lapsed into 
the imbecility of pretending to think slavery right or best, but he 
saw no way of escaping from it ; and when asked his opinion as 
to the final solution of the problem, he could only throw it upon 
Providence. Providence, he said, would remove the evil in its 
own good time, and nothing remained for men but to cease the 
agitation of the subject. His first efix)rts, as his last, were directed 
to the silencing of both parties, but most especially the Abolition- 
ists, whose character and aims he misconceived. With John C. 
Calhoun sitting near him in the Senate-chamber, and with fire- 
eaters swarming at the other end of the Capitol, he could, as late 
as 1843, cast the whole blame of the slavery excitement upon the 
few individuals at the North who were beginninsr to discern the 
ulterior designs of the NuUifiers. Among his letters of 1843 
there is one addressed to a friend who was about to Avrite a pam- 
phlet against the Abolitionists. Mr. Clay gave him an outline 
of what he thought the pamphlet ought to be. 

" The great aim and object of your tract should be to arouse the la- 
boring classes in the Free States against abolition. Depict the conse- 
quences to them of immediate abolition. The slaves, being free, would 
be dispersed throughout the Union ; they would enter into competition 
with the free laborer, with the American, the Irish, the German ; re- 
duce his wages ; be confounded with him, and affect his moral and 
social standing. And as the ultras go for both abolition and amalga- 
mation, show that their object is to unite in marriage the laboring 
white man and the laboring black man, and to reduce the white labor- 
ing man to the despised and degraded condition of the black man. 

" I would show their opposition to colonization. Show Its humane, 
religious, and patriotic aims ; that they are to separate those whom 
God has separated. Why do the Abolitionists oppose colonization ? 
To keep and amalgamate together the two races, in violation of God's 
will, and to keep the blacks here, that they may interfere with, de- 
grade, and debase the laboring whites. Show that the British nation 
IS co-operating with the Abolitionists, for the purpose of dissolving the 
Union, etc." 

This is so very absurd, that, if we did not know it to express 
Mr. Clay's habitual feeling at that time, we should be compelled 
to see in it, not Henry Clay, but the candidate for the Presi- 



48 HENRY CLAY. 

dency. He really thought so in 1843. He was perfectly con- 
vinced that the white race and the black could not exist together 
on equal terras. One of his last acts was to propose emancipa- 
tion in Kentucky ; but it was an essential feature of his plan to 
transport the emancipated blacks to Africa. When we look over 
Mr. Clay's letters and speeches of those years, we meet with so 
much that is short-sighted and grossly erroneous, that we are 
obliged to confess that this man, gifted as he was, and dear as 
liis memory is to us, shared the judicial blindness of his order. 
Its baseness and arrogance he did not share. His head was often 
wrong, but his heart was generally right. It atones for all his 
mere errors of abstract opinion, that he was never admitted to 
the confidence of the Nullifiers, and that he uniformly voted 
against the measures inspired by them. He was against the un- 
timely annexation of Texas ; he opposed the rejection of the 
anti-slavery petitions ; and he declared that no earthly power 
should ever induce him to consent to the addition of one acre of 
slave territory to the possessions of the United States. 

It is proof positive of a man's essential soundness, if he im- 
proves as he grows old. Henry Clay's last years were his best ; 
he ripened to the very end. His friends remarked the moder- 
ation of his later opinions, and his charity for those who had 
injured him most. During the last ten years of his life no one 
ever heard him utter a harsh judgment of an opponent. Domes- 
tic afflictions, frequent and severe, had chastened his heart ; his 
six affectionate and happy daughters were dead ; one son was a 
hopeless lunatic in an asylum ; another was not what such a 
father had a right to expect ; and, at length, his favorite and 
most promising son, Henry, in the year 1847, fell at the battle 
of Buena Vista. It was just after this last crushing loss, and 
probably in consequence of it, that he was baptized and confirmed 
a member of the Episcopal Church. 

When, in 1849, he reappeared in the Senate, to assist, if possi- 
ble, in removing the slavery question from politics, he was an in- 
firm and serious, but not sad, old man of seventy-two. He never 
lost his cheerfulness or his faith, but he felt deeply for his dis- 
tracted country. During that memorable session of Congress he 



HENEY CLAY. 49 

spoke seventy times. Often extremely sick and feeble, scarcely 
able, with the assistance of a friend's arm, to climb the steps of 
the Capitol, he was never absent on the days when the Compro- 
mise was to be debated. It appears to be well attested, that his 
last great speech on the Compromise was the immediate cause of 
his death. On the morning on which he began his speech, he 
was accompanied by a clerical friend, to whom he said, on reach- 
ing the long flight of steps leading to the Capitol, " Will you lend 
me your arm, my friend? for I find myself quite weak and ex- 
hausted this morning." Every few steps he was obliged to stop 
and take breath. " Had you not better defer your speech ? " 
asked the clergyman. " My dear friend," said the dying orator, 
" I consider our country in danger ; and if I can be the means, 
in any measure, of averting that danger, my health or life is 
of little consequence." When he rose to speak, it was but too 
evident that he was unfit for the task he had undertaken. But, 
as he kindled with his subject, his cough left him, and his bent 
form resumed all its wonted erectness and majesty. He may, in 
the prime of his strength, have spoken with more energy, but 
never with so much pathos and grandeur. His speech lasted two 
days, and, though he lived two years longer, he never recovered 
from the effects of the effort. Toward the close of the second 
day, his friends repeatedly proposed an adjournment ; but he 
would not desist until he had given complete utterance to his 
feelings. He said afterwards that he was not sure, if he 
gave way to an adjournment, that he should ever be able to 
resume. 

In the course of this long debate, Mr. Clay said some things to 
which the late war has given a new interest. He knew, at last, 
what the fire-eaters meant. He perceived now that it was not 
the few abhorred Abolitionists of the Northern States from whom 
danger to the Union was to be apprehended. On one occasion 
allusion was made to a South Carolina hot-head, who had public- 
ly proposed to raise the flag of disunion. Thunders of applause 
broke from the galleries when Mr. Clay retorted by saying, that, 
if Mr. Rhett had really made that proposition, and should follow 
it up by corresponding acts, he would be a tkaitor ; " and," 

3 D 



50 HENRY CLAY. 

added Mr. Clay, " I hope he will meet a traitor's fate." When 
the chairman had succeeded in restoring silence, Mr. Clay made 
that celebrated declaration which was so frequently quoted in 
1861 : " If Kentucky to-morrow should unfurl the banner of re- 
sistance unjustly, I will never fight under that banner. I owe a 
paramount allegiance to the whole Union, — a subordinate one to 
my own State." He said also : " If any one State, or a portion 
of the people of any State, choose to place themselves in military 
array against the government of the Union, I am for trying the 
strength of the government. I am for ascertaining whether we 
have a government or not." Again : " The Senator speaks of 
Virginia being my country. This Union, sir, is my country ; 
the thirty States are my country ; Kentucky is my country, and 
Virginia no more than any State in the Union." And yet again : 
" There are those who think that the Union must be preserved 
by an exclusive reliance upon love and reason. That is not my 
opinion. I have some confidence in this instrumentality ; but, 
depend upon it that no human government can exist without the 
power of applying force, and the actual application of it in ex- 
treme cases." 

Who can estimate the influence of these clear and emphatic 
utterances ten years after? The crowded galleries, the number- 
less newspaper reports, the quickly succeeding death of the great 
orator, — all aided to give them currency and effect. We shall 
never know how many wavering minds they aided to decide in 
18G1. Not that Mr. Clay really believed the conflict would 
occur : he was mercifully permitted to die in the conviction that 
the Compromise of 1850 had removed all immediate danger, and 
greatly lessened that of the future. Far indeed was he from 
foreseeing that the ambition of a man born in New England, 
calling himself a disciple of Andrew Jackson, would, within five 
years, destroy all compromises, and render all future compromise 
impossible, by procuring the repeal of the first, — the Missouri 
Compromise of 1821. 

Henry Clay was formed by nature to please, to move, and to 
impress his countrymen. Never was there a more captivating 
presence. We remember bearing Horace Greeley say that, if a 



HENRY CLAY. 51 

man only saw Henry Clay's back, he would know that it was the 
back of a distinguished man. How his presence filled a drawing- 
room ! "With what an easy sway he held captive ten acres of 
mass-meeting ! And, in the Senate, how skilfully he showed 
himself respectfully conscious of the galleries, without appearing 
to address them ! Take him for all in all, we must regard him 
as the first of American orators ; but posterity will not assign 
him that rank, because posterity will not hear that matchless 
voice, will not see those large gestures, those striking attitudes, 
that grand manner, which gave to second-rate composition first- 
rate efi^ect. He could not have been a great statesman, if he had 
been ever so greatly endowed. While slavery existed no states- 
manship was possible, except that which was temporary and tem- 
porizing. The thorn, we repeat, was in the flesh ; and the doctors 
were all pledged to try and cure the patient without extracting it. 
They could do nothing but dress the wound, put on this salve and 
that, give the sufferer a little respite from anguish, and, after a 
brief interval, repeat the operation. Of all these physicians 
Henry Clay was the most skilful and effective. He both handled 
the sore place with consummate dexterity, and kept up the con- 
stitution of the patient by stimulants, which enabled him, at last, 
to live through the appalling operation which removed the cause 
of his agony. 

Henry Clay was a man of honor and a gentleman. He kept 
bis word. He was true to his friends, his party, and his convic- 
tions. He paid his debts and his son's debts. The instinct of 
solvency was very strong in him. He had a religion, of which 
the main component parts were self-respect and love of country. 
These were supremely authoritative with him ; he would not do 
anything which he felt to be beneath Henry Clay, or which he 
thought would be injurious to the United States. Five times a 
candidate for the Presidency, no man can say that he ever pur- 
chased support by the promise of an office, or by any other en- 
gagement savoring of dishonor. Great talents and a great under- 
standing are seldom bestowed on the same individual. Mr. 
Clay's usefulness as a statesman was limited by his talent as an 
orator. He relied too much on his oratory ; he was never such a 



52 HENEY CLAY. 

student as a man intrusted with public business ought to be. 
Hence he originated nothing and established nothing. His 
speeches will long be interesting as the relics of a magnificent 
and dazzling personality, and for the light they cast upon the his- 
tory of parties ; but they add scarcely anything to the intellectu- 
al property of the nation. Of American orators he was the first 
whose speeches were ever collected in a volume. Millions read 
them with admiration in his lifetime ; but already they have sunk 
to the level of the works " without which no gentleman's library 
is complete," — works which every one possesses and no cue 
reads. 

Henry Clay, regarded as a subject for biography, is still un- 
touched. Campaign Lives of him can be collected by the score ; 
and the Rev. Calvin Colton wrote three volumes purporting to be 
the Life of Henry Clay. Mr. Colton was a very honest gentle- 
man, and not wanting in ability ; but writing, as he did, in Mr. 
Clay's own house, he became, as it were, enchanted by his sub- 
ject. He was enamored of Mr. Clay to such a degree that his 
pen ran into eulogy by an impulse which was irresistible, and 
which he never attempted to resist. In point of arrangement, too, 
his work is chaos come again. A proper biography of Mr. Clay 
would be one of the most entertaining and instructive of works. 
It would embrace the ever-memorable rise and first triumphs of 
the Democratic party ; the wild and picturesque life of the early 
settlers of Kentucky ; the war of 1812 ; Congress from 1806 to 
1852 ; the fury and corruption of Jackson's reign ; and the three 
great compromises which postponed the Rebellion. All the lead- 
ing men and all the striking events of our history would con- 
tribute something to the interest and value of the work. "Why 
go to antiquity or to the Old World for subjects, when such a 
subject as this remains unwritten ? 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 



kF words spoken in recent times, few have touched so many- 
hearts as those uttered by Sir Walter Scott on his death- 
bed. There has seldom been so much of mere enjoyment crowded 
into the compass of one lifetime as there was into his. Even his 
work — all of his best work — was only more elaborate and 
keenly relished play ; for story-telling, the occupation of his 
maturity, had first been the delight of his childhood, and re- 
mained always his favorite recreation. Triumph rewarded his 
early efforts, and admiration followed him to the grave. Into no 
human face could this man look, nor into any crowd of flices, 
which did not return his glance with a gaze of admiring love. 
He lived precisely where and how it was happiest for him to 
live ; and he had above most men of his time that disposition of 
mind which makes the best of bad fortune and the most of good. 
But when his work and his play were all done, and he came 
calmly to review his life, and the life of man on earth, this was 
the sum of his reflections, this was what he had to say to the man 
to whom he had confided his daughter's happiness : " Lockhart, 
I may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good 
man, — be virtuous, — be religious, — be a good man. Noth- 
ing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie 
here." 

So do we all feel in view of the open coffin, much as we 
may differ as to what it is to be good, virtuous, and religious. 
Was this man, who lies dead here before us, faithful to his trust ? 
Was he sincere, pure, just, and benevolent? Did he help civili- 
zation, or was he an obstacle in its way ? Did he ripen and im- 
prove to the end, or did he degenerate and go astray? These are 



5Q DANIEL WEBSTER. 

the questions whicli are silentlj' considered when we look upon 
the still countenance of death, and especially when the departed 
was a person who influenced his generation long and powerfully. 
Usually it is only the last of these questions which mortals can 
answer with any certainty ; but from the answer to that one we 
infer the answers to all the others. As it is only the wise who 
learn, so it is only the good who improve. When we see a man 
gaining upon his faults as he advances in life, when we find him 
more self-contained and cheerful, more learned and inquisitive, 
more just and considerate, more single-eyed and noble in his 
aims, at fifty than he was at forty, and at seventy than he was at 
fifty, we have the best reason perceptible by human eyes for con- 
cluding that he has been governed by right principles and good 
feelings. We have a right to pronounce such a person good, and 
he is justified in believing us. 

The three men most distinguished in public life during the last 
forty years in the United States were Henry Clay, John C. Cal- 
houn, and Daniel Webster, Henry Clay improved as he grew 
old. He was a venerable, serene, and virtuous old man. The 
impetuosity, restlessness, ambition, and love of display, and the 
detrimental habits of his earlier years, gave place to tranquillity, 
temperance, moderation, and a patriotism without the alloy of 
personal objects. Disappointment had chastened, not soured 
him. Public life enlarged, not narrowed him. The city of 
Washington purified, not corrupted him. He came there a 
gambler, a drinker, a profuse consumer of tobacco, and a turner 
of night into day. He overcame the worst of those habits very 
early in his residence at the capital. He came to Washington 
to exhibit his talents, he remained there to serve his country ; 
uor of his country did he ever think the less, or serve her less 
zealously, because she denied him the honor he coveted for thirty 
years. We cannot say this of Calhoun. He degenerated fright- 
fully during the last twenty years of his life. His energy degen- 
erated into intensity, and his patriotism narrowed into section- 
alism. He became unteachable, incapable of considering an 
opinion opposite to his own, or even a fact that did not favor it. 
Exempt by his bodily constitution from all temptation to physical 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 57 

excesses, his body was worn out by the intense, unhealthy work- 
ing of his mind. False opinions falsely held and intolerantly 
maintained were the debauchery that sharpened the lines of his 
face, and converted his voice into a bark. Peace, health, and 
growth early became impossible to him, for there was a canker 
in the heart of the man. His once not dishonorable desire of the 
Presidency became at last an infuriate lust after it, which his 
natural sincerity compelled him to reveal even while wrathfully 
denying it. He considered that he had been defrauded of the 
prize, and he had some reason for thinking so. Some men 
avenge their wrongs by the pistol, others by invective ; but the 
only weapons which this man could wield were abstract proposi- 
tions. From the hills of South Carolina he hurled paradoxes at 
General Jackson, and appealed from the dicta of Mrs. Eaton's 
drawing-room to a hair-splitting theory of States' Eights. Fif- 
teen hundred thousand armed men have since sprung up from 
those harmless-looking dragon's teeth, so recklessly sown in the 
hot Southern soil. 

Of the three men whom we have named, Daniel Webster was 
incomparably the most richly endowed by nature. In his life- 
time it was impossible to judge him aright. His presence usu- 
ally overwhelmed criticism ; his intimacy always fascinated it. 
It so happened, that he grew to his full stature and attained his 
utmost development in a community where human nature ap- 
pears to be undergoing a pi'ocess of diminution, — where people 
are smaller-boned, less muscular, more nervous, and more sus- 
ceptible than their ancestors. He possessed, in consequence, an 
enormous physical magnetism, as we term it, over his fellow- 
citizens, apart from the natural influence of his talents and un- 
derstanding. Fidgety men were quieted in his presence, women 
were spellbound by it, and the busy, anxious public contemplated 
his majestic calm with a feeling of relief, as well as admiration. 
Large numbers of people in New England, for many years, re- 
posed upon Daniel Webster. He represented to them the maj- 
esty and the strength of the government of the United States. 
He gave them a sense of safety. Amid the flighty politics of the 
time and the loud insincerities of Washington, there seemed one 

3* 



68 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

solid thing in America, so long as he sat in an arm-chair of the 
Senate-chamber. When he appeared in State Street, slowly 
pacing, with an arm behind him, business was brought to an ab- 
solute stand-still. As the whisper passed along, the windows filled 
with clerks, pen in mouth, peering out to catch a glimpse of the 
man whom they had seen fifty times before ; while the bankers 
and merchants hastened forth to give him salutation, or exchange 
a passing word, happy if they could but catch his eye. At home, 
and in a good mood, he was reputed to be as entertaining a man 
as New England ever held, — a gambolling, jocund leviathan out 
on the sea-shore, and in the library overflowing with every kind 
of knowledge that can be acquired without fatigue, and received 
without preparation. Mere celebrity, too, is dazzling to some 
minds. While, therefore, this imposing person lived among us, 
he was blindly worshipped by many, blindly hated by some, 
calmly considered by very few. To this hour he is a great in- 
fluence in the United States. Perhaps, with the abundant ma- 
terial now accessible, it is not too soon to attempt to ascertain 
how far he was worthy of the estimation in which his fellow- 
citizens held him, and what place he ought to hold in the esteem 
of posterity. At least, it can never be unpleasing to Americans 
to recur to the most interesting specimen of our kind that has 
lived in America since Franklin. 

He could not have been born in a better place, nor of better 
stock, nor at a better time, nor reared in circumstances more fa- 
vorable to harmonious development. He grew up in the Swit- 
zerland of America. From a hill on his father's New Hampshire 
farm, he could see most of the noted summits of New England. 
Granite-topped Kearsarge stood out in bold relief near by ; 
Mount Washington and its attendant peaks, not yet named, 
bounded the northern horizon like a low, silvery cloud ; and 
the principal heights of the Green Mountains, rising near the 
Connecticut River, were clearly visible. The Merrimack, most 
serviceable of rivers, begins its course a mile or two off, formed 
by the union of two mountain torrents. Among those hills, 
hi^h up, sometimes near the summits, lakes are found, broad, 
deep, and still ; and down the sides run innumerable rills, which 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 59 

form those noisy brooks that rush along the bottom of the hills, 
where now the roads wind along, shaded by the mountain, and 
enlivened by the music of the waters. Among these hills there 
are, here and there, expanses of level country large enough for a 
farm, with the addition of some fields upon the easier acclivities 
and woodlands higher up. There was one field of a hundred 
acres upon Captain Webster's mountain farm so level that a 
lamb could be seen on any part of it from the windows of the 
house. Every tourist knows that region now, — that wide, bil- 
lowy expanse of dark mountains and vivid green fields, dotted 
with white farm-houses, and streaked with silvery streams. It 
was rougher, seventy years ago, secluded, hardly accessible, the 
streams unbridged, the roads of primitive formation ; but the 
worst of the rough work had been done there, and the production 
of superior human beings had become possible, before the Web- 
ster boys were born. 

Daniel Webster's father was the strong man of his nei2:hbor- 
hood ; the very model of a republican citizen and hero, — stal- 
wart, handsome, brave, and gentle. Ebenezer Webster inherited 
no worldly advantages. Sprung fi'om a line of New Hampshire 
farmers, he was apprenticed, in his thirteenth year, to another 
New Hampshire farmer ; and when he had sei'ved his time, he 
enlisted as a private soldier in the old French war, and came 
back from the campaigns about 'Lake George a captain. He 
never went to school. Like so many other New England boys, 
he learned what is essential for the carrying on of business in 
the chimney-corner, by the light of the fire. He possessed one 
beautiful accomplishment : he was a grand reader. Unlettered 
as he was, he greatly enjoyed the more lofty compositions of 
poets and orators ; and his large, sonorous voice enabled him to 
read them with fine effect. His sons read in his manner, even 
to his rustic pronunciation of some words. Daniel's calm, clear- 
cut rendering of certain noted passages — favorites in his early 
home — was all his father's. There is a pleasing tradition in the 
neighborhood, of the teamsters who came to Ebenezer Webster's 
mill saying to one another, when they had discharged their load 
and tied their horses, " Come, let us go in, and hear little Dan 



GO DANTEL WEBSTER. 

read a psalm." The French war ended, Captain Webster, in 
compensation for his services, received a grant of land in the 
mountain wilderness at the head of the Merrimack, where, as miller 
and farmer, he lived and reared his family. The Revolutionary 
"War summoned this noble yeoman to arms once more. He led 
forth his neighbors to the strife, and fought at their head, with 
his old rank of captain, at White Plains and at Bennington, and 
served valiantly through the war. From that time to the end of 
his life, though much trusted and employed by his fellow-citizens 
as legislator, magistrate, and judge, he lived but for one object, — 
the education and advancement of his children. All men were 
poor then in New Hampshire, compared with the condition of 
their descendants. Judge Webster was a poor, and even embai*- 
rassed man, to the day of his death. The hardships he had 
endured as soldier and pioneer made him, as he said, an old man 
before bis time. Rheumatism bent his form, once so erect and 
vigorous. Black care subdued his spirits, once so joyous and 
elastic. Such were the fathers of fair New England. 

This strong-minded, uncultured man was a Puritan and a 
Federalist, — a catholic, tolerant, and genial Puritan, an intol- 
erant and almost bigoted Federalist. Washington, Adams, and 
Hamilton were the civilians highest in his esteem ; the good 
Jefferson he dreaded and abhorred. The French Revolution 
was mei'e blackness and horror to him ; and when it assumed the 
form of Napoleon Bonaparte, his heart sided passionately with 
England in her struggle to extirpate it. His boys were in the 
fullest sympathy with him in all his opinions and feelings. They, 
too, were tolerant and untheological Puritans ; they, too, were 
most strenuous Federalists ; and neither of them ever recovered 
from their father's influence, nor advanced much beyond him in 
their fundamental beliefs. Readers have, doubtless, remarked, 
in Mr. Webster's oration upon Adams and Jefferson, how the 
stress of the eulogy falls upon Adams, while cold and scant jus- 
tice is meted out to the greatest and wisest of our statesmen. It 
was Ebenezer Webster who spoke that day, with the more melo- 
dious voice of his son. There is a tradition in New Hampshire 
that Judge Webster fell sick on a journey in a town of Republi- 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 61 

can politics, and besought the doctor to help him speedily on his 
way home, saying that he was born a Federalist, had lived a 
Federalist, and could not die in peace in any but a Federalist 
town. 

Among the ten children of this sturdy patriot and partisan, 
eight were ordinary mortals, and two most extraordinary, — Eze- 
kiel, born in 1780, and Daniel, born in 1782, — the youngest of 
his boys. Some of the elder children were even less than ordi- 
nary. Elderly residents of the neighborhood speak of one half- 
brother of Daniel and Ezekiel as penurious and narrow ; and 
the letters of others of the family indicate very plain, good, com- 
monplace people. But these two, the sons of their father's prime, 
inherited all his grandeur of form and beauty of countenance, 
his taste for high literature, along with a certain energy of mind 
that came to them, by some unknown law of nature, from their 
father's mother. From her Daniel derived his jet-black hair and 
eyes, and his complexion of burnt gunpowder ; though all the 
rest of the children except one were remarkable for fairness of 
complexion, and had sandy hair. Ezekiel, who was considered 
the handsomest man in the United States, had a skin of singular 
fairness, and light hair. He is vividly remembered in New 
Hampshire for his marvellous beauty of form and face, his courtly 
and winning manners, the weight and majesty of his presence. 
He was a signal refutation of Dr. Holmes's theory, that grand 
manners and high breeding are the result of several generations 
of culture. Until he was nineteen, this peerless gentleman 
worked on a rough mountain farm on the outskirts of civilization, 
as his ancestors had for a hundred and fifty years before him ; 
but he was refined to the tips of his finger-nails and to the buttons 
of his coat. Like his more famous brother, he had an artist's eye 
for the becoming in costume, and a keen sense for all the proprie- 
ties and decorums both of public and private life. Limited in 
his view by the narrowness of his provincial sphere, as well as 
by inherited prejudices, he was a better man and citizen than his 
brother, without a touch of his genius. Nor was that half- 
brother of Daniel, who had the black hair and eyes and gunpow- 
der skin, at all like Daniel, or equal to him in mental power. 



62 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

There is nothing in our literature more pleasing than the 
glimpses it affords of the early life of these two brothers ; — Eze- 
kiel, robust, steady-going, persevering, self-denying ; Daniel, 
careless of work, eager for play, often sick, always slender and 
weakly, and regarded rather as a burden upon the family than 
a help to it. His feebleness early habituated him to being a re- 
cipient of aid and favor, and it decided his destiny. It has been 
the custom in New England, from the earliest time, to bring up 
one son of a prosperous family to a profession, and the one se- 
lected was usually the boy who seemed least capable of earning a 
livelihood by manual labor. Ebenezer Webster, heavily burdened 
with responsibility all his life long, had most ardently desired to 
give his elder sons a better education that he had himself enjoyed, 
but could not. When Daniel was a boy, his large family was 
beginning to lift his load a little ; the country was filling up ; his 
farm was more productive, and he felt somewhat more at his ease. 
His sickly youngest son, because he was sickly, and only for that 
reason, he chose from his numerous brood to send to an academy, 
designing to make a schoolmaster of him. We have no reason 
to believe that any of the family saw anything extraordinary in 
the boy. Except that he read aloud unusually well, he had 
given no sign of particular talent, unless it might be that he ex- 
celled in catching trout, shooting squirrels, and fighting cocks. 
His mother, observing his love of play and his equal love of 
books, said he " would come to something or nothing, she could 
not tell which " ; but his father, noticing his power over the sym- 
pathies of others, and comparing him with his bashful brother, 
used to remark, that he had fears for Ezekiel, but that Daniel 
would assuredly make his way in the world. It is certain that 
the lad himself was totally unconscious of possessing extraordi- 
nary talents, and indulged no early dream of greatness. He 
tells us himself, that he loved but two things in his youth, — play 
and reading. The rude schools which he trudged two or three 
miles in the winter every day to attend, taught him scarcely any- 
thing. His father's saw-mill, he used to say, was the real 
school of his youth. When he had set the saw and turned on 
the water, there would be fifteen minutes of tranquillity before 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 63 

the log again required his attention, during which he sat and 
absorbed knowledge. " We had so few books," he records in the 
exquisite fragment of autobiography he has left us, " that to read 
them once or twice was nothing. We thought they were all to 
be got by heart." 

How touching the story, so well known, of the mighty struggle 
and long self-sacrifice it cost this family to get the youth through 
college ! The whole expense did not average one hundred and 
fifty dollars a year ; but it seemed to the boy so vast and unat- 
tainable a good, that, when his father announced his purpose to 
attempt it, he was completely overcome ; his head was dizzy ; 
his tongue was paralyzed ; he could only press his fathei''s hands 
and shed tears. Slender indeed was his preparation for Dart- 
mouth. From the day when he took his first Latin lesson to 
that on which he entered college was thirteen months. He could 
translate Cicero's orations with some ease, and make out with 
difficulty and labor the easiest sentences of the Greek Reader, 
and that was the whole of what was called his " preparation " for 
college. In June, 1797, he did not know the Greek alphabet; 
in August of the same year he was admitted to the Freshman 
Class of Dartmouth on engaging to supply his deficiencies by 
extra study. 

Neither at college nor at any time could Daniel Webster hi 
properly called a student, and well he knew it. Many a time he 
has laughed, in his jovial, rollicking manner, at the preposterous 
reputation for learning a man can get by bringing out a fragment 
of curious knowledge at the right moment at college. He was 
an absorbent of knowledge, never a student. The Latin of 
Cicero and Virgil was congenial and easy to him, and he learned 
more of it than the required portion. But even in Latin, he 
tells us, he was excelled by some of his own class ; and " his 
attainments were not such," he adds, " as told for much in the 
recitation-room." Greek he never enjoyed : his curiosity was 
never awakened on the edge of that boundless contiguity of 
interesting knowledge, and he only learned enough Greek to 
escape censure. He said, forty years after, in an after-dinner 
Bpeech: "When I was at school I felt exceedingly obliged to 



64 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Homer's messengers for the exact literal fidelity with which they 
delivered their messages. The seven or eight lines of good 
Homeric Greek in which they had received the commands of 
Agamemnon or Achilles they recited to whomsoever the message 
was to be carried ; and as they repeated them verbatim, some- 
times twice or thrice, it saved me the trouble of learning so much 
Greek." It was not at " school " that he had this experience, but 
at Dartmouth College. For mathematics, too, he had not the 
slightest taste. He humorously wrote to a fellow-student, soon 
after leaving college, that " all that he knew about conterminous 
arches or evanescent subtenses might be collected on the pupil of 
a gnat's eye without making him wink." At college, in fact, he 
was simply an omnivorous reader, studying only so much as to 
pass muster in the recitation-room. Every indication we possess 
of his college life, as well as his own repeated assertions, confirms 
the conclusion that Nature had formed him to use the products 
of other men's toil, not to add to the common fund. Those who 
are conversant with college life know very well what it means 
when a youth does not take to Greek, and has an aversion to 
mathematics. Such a youth may have immense talent, and give 
splendid expression to the sentiments of his countrymen, but he 
is not likely to be one of the priceless few of the human race who 
dicover truth or advance opinion. It is the energetic, the origi- 
nating minds that are susceptible to the allurements of difficulty. 
On the other hand, Daniel "Webster had such qualities as made 
every one feel that he was the first man in the College. Tall, 
gaunt, and sallow, with an incomparable forehead, and those cav- 
ernous and brilliant eyes of his, he had much of the large and 
tranquil presence which was so important an element of his power 
over others at all periods of his life. His letters of this time, as 
well as the recollections of his fellow-students, show him the 
easy, humorous, rather indolent and strictly correct " good-fellow," 
whom professors and companions equally relished. He browsed 
much in the College library, and had the habit of bringing to 
bear upon the lesson of the hour the information gathered in his 
miscellaneous reading, — a practice that much enlivens the mo- 
notony of recitation. The half-dozen youths of his particular set, 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 65 

it appears, plumed themselves upon resembling the early Chris- 
tians in having all things in common. The first to rise in the 
morning — and he must have been an early riser indeed who 
was up before Daniel "Webster — " dressed himself in the best 
which the united apartments afforded " ; the next made the best 
selection from what remained ; and the last was happy if he 
found rags enough to justify his appearance in the chapel. The 
relator of this pleasant reminiscence adds, that he was once the 
possessor of an eminently respectable beaver hat, a costly article 
of resplendent lustre. It was missing one day, could not be 
found, and was given up for lost. Several weeks after " friend 
Dan " returned from a distant town, where he had been teaching 
school, wearing the lost beaver, and relieving its proprietor from 
the necessity of covering his head with a battered and long-dis- 
carded hat of felt. How like the Daniel "Webster of later years, 
who never could acquire the sense of meum and tuum, supposed 
to be the basis of civilization ! 

Mr. "Webster always spoke slightingly of his early oratorical 
efforts, and requested Mr. Everett, the editor of his works, not 
to search them out. He was not just to the productions of his 
youth, if we may judge from the Fourth-of-July oration which he 
delivered in 1800, when he was a Junior at Dartmouth, eighteen 
years of age. This glowing psalm of the republican David is 
perfectly characteristic, and entirely worthy of him. The times 
that tried men's souls, — how recent and vivid they were to the 
sons of Ebenezer Webster, who had led forth from the New 
Hampshire hills the neighbors at whose firesides Ezekiel and 
Daniel had listened, open-mouthed, to the thousand forgotten in- 
cidents of the war. Their professors of history were old John 
Bowen, who had once been a prisoner with the Indians ; Robert 
Wise, who had sailed round the world and fought in the Revolu- 
tion on both sides ; George Bayly, a pioneer, who saw the first 
tree felled in Northern New Hampshire ; women of the neigh- 
borhood, who had heard the midnight yell of savages ; and, above 
all, their own lion-hearted father, who had warred with French- 
men, Indians, wild nature, British troops, and French ideas. 
" 0," wrote Daniel once, " I shall never hear such story-telling 

E 



66 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

again!" It was not in the cold pages of Hildretb, nor in the 
brief summaries of school-books, that this imaginative, sympathet- 
ic youth had learned that part of the political history of the 
United States — from 1787 to 1800 — which will ever be its 
most intei'esting portion. He learned it at town-meetings, in the 
newspapers, at his father's house, among his neighbors, on elec- 
tion days ; he learned it as an intelligent youth, with a passion- 
ately loyal father and mother, learned the history of the late war, 
and is now learning the agonizing history of " reconstruction." 
This oration is the warm and modest expression of all that the 
receptive and unsceptical student had imbibed and felt during the 
years of his formation, who saw before him a large company of 
Revolutionary soldiers and a great multitude of Federalist parti- 
sans. He saluted the audience as " Countrymen, brethren, and 
fathers." The oration was chiefly a rapid, exulting review of the 
history of the young Republic, with an occasional pomposity, and 
a few expressions caught from the party discussions of the day. 
It is amusing to hear this young Federalist of 1800 speak of 
Napoleon Bonaparte as " the gasconading pilgrim of Egypt," and 
the government of France as the " supercilious, five-headed Di- 
rectory," and the President of the United States as " the firm, the 
wise, the inflexible Adams, who with steady hand draws the dis- 
guising veil from the intrigues of foreign enemies and the plots 
of domestic foes." It is amusing to read, as the utterance of 
Daniel Webster, that " Columbia is now seated in the forum of na- 
tions, and the empires of the world are amazed at the bright efful- 
gence of her glory." But it is interesting to observe, also, that at 
eighteen, not less fervently than at forty-eight, he felt the impor- 
tance of the message with which he was charijed to the American 
people, — the necessity of the Union, and the value of the Con- 
stitution as the uniting bond. The following passage has, per- 
haps, more in it of the Webster of 1830 than any other in the 
oration. The reader will notice the similarity between one part 
of it and the famous passage in the Bunker Hill oration, begin- 
ning " Venerable men," addressed to the survivors of the Revo- 
lution. 

" Thus, friends and citizens, did the kind hand of overruling Provi- 



DANIEL WEBSTEE. 67 

dence conduct us, through toils, fatigues, and dangers, to independence 
and peace. If piety be the rational exercise of the human soul, if re- 
ligion be not a chimera, and if the vestiges of heavenly assistance are 
clearly traced in those events which mark the annals of our nation, it 
becomes us on this day, in consideration of the great things which have 
been done for us, to render the tribute of unfeigned thanks to that God 
who superintends the universe, and holds aloft the scale that weighs the 
destinies of nations. 

" The conclusion of the Revolutionary War did not accomplish the 
entire achievements of our countrymen. Their military character was 
then. Indeed, sufficiently established ; but the time was coming which 
should prove their political sagacity, their ability to govern them- 
selves. 

" No sooner was peace restored with England, (the first grand 
article of which was the acknowledgment of our independence,) than 
the old system of Confederation, dictated at first by necessity, and 
adopted for the purposes of the moment, was found Inadequate to the 
government of an extensive empire. Under a full conviction of this, 
we then saw the people of these States engaged In a transaction which 
Is undoubtedly the greatest approximation towards human perfection 
the political world ever yet witnessed, and which, perhaps, will forever 
stand In the history of mankind without a parallel. A great republic, 
composed of different States, whose interest In all respects could not 
be perfectly compatible, then came deliberately forward, discarded one, 
system of government, and adopted another, without the loss of onti 
man's blood. 

" There Is not a single government now existing In Europe which 
is not based in usurpation, and established, If established at all, by the 
sacrifice of thousands. But In the adoption of our present sys- 
tem of jurisprudence, we see the powers necessary for government 
voluntarily flowing from the people, their only proper origin, and 
directed to the public good, their only proper object. 

" With peculiar propriety, we may now felicitate ourselves on that 
happy form of mixed government under which we live. The advan- 
tages resulting to the citizens of the Union are utterly incalculable, 
and the day when it was received by a majority of the States shall 
stand on the catalogue of American anniversaries second to none but 
the birthday of independence. 

" In consequence of the adoption of our present system of govern- 
ment, and the virtuous manner In which It has been administered by a 
Washington and an Adams, we are this day in the enjoyment of peace, 



68 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

■while war devastates Europe ! We can now sit down beneath the 
shadow of the olive, while her cities blaze, her streams run purple 
with blood, and her fields glitter with a forest of bayonets ! The 
citizens of America can this day throng the temples of freedom, and 
renew their oaths of fealty to independence ; while Holland, our 
once sister republic, is erased from the catalogue of nations ; while 
Venice is destroyed, Italy ravaged, and Switzerland — the once 
happy, the once united, the once flourishing Switzerland — lies 
bleeding at every pore ! " 

He need not have been ashamed of this speech, despite the 
lumbering bombast of some of its sentences. All that made him 
estimable as a public man is contained in it, — the sentiment of 
nationality, and a clear sense of the only means by which the 
United States can remain a nation ; namely, strict fidelity to the 
Constitution as interpreted by the authority itself creates, and 
modified in the way itself appoints. We have never read the 
production of a youth which was more prophetic of the man than 
this. It was young New England that spoke through him on 
that occasion ; and in all the best part of his life he never 
touched a strain which New England had not inspii-ed, or could 
not reach. 

His success at college giving him ascendency at home, he 
employed it for the benefit of his brother in a manner which few 
sons would have dared, and no son ought to attempt. His father, 
now advanced in years, infirm, " an old man before his time " 
through hardship and toil, much in debt, depending chiefly upon 
his salary of four hundred dollars a year as Judge of the Court 
of Common Pleas, and heavily taxed to maintain Daniel in col- 
lege, had seen all his other sons married and settled except 
Ezekiel, upon whom he leaned as the staff of his declining years, 
and the main dependence of his wife and two maiden daughters. 
Nevertheless, Daniel, after a whole night of consultation with his 
brother, urged the old man to send Ezekiel to college also. The 
fond and generous father replied, that he had but little property, 
and it would take all that little to carry another son through col- 
lege to a profession ; but he lived only for his children, and, for 
his own part, he was willing to run the risk ; but there was the 
mother and two unmarried sisters, to whom the risk was far more 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 69 

serious. If they consented, he was willing. The mother said : 
" I have lived long in the world, and have been happy in my 
children. If Daniel and Ezekiel will promise to take care of 
me in my old age, I will consent to the sale of all our property 
at once, and they may enjoy the benefit of that which remains 
after our debts are paid." Upon hearing this, all the family, we 
are told, were dissolved in tears, and the old man gave his assent. 
This seems hard, — two stout and vigorous young men willing to 
risk their aged parents' home and dignity for such a purpose, or 
for any purpose ! In the early days, however, there was a sin- 
gular unity of feeling and interest in a good New England 
family, and there were opportunities for professional men which 
rendered the success of two such lads as these nearly certain, if 
they lived to establish themselves. Nevertheless, it was too 
much to ask, and more than Daniel Webster would have asked 
if he had been properly alive to the rights of others. Ezekiel 
shouldered his bundle, trudged off to school, where he lived and 
studied at the cost of one dollar a week, worked his way to the 
position of the second lawyer in New Hampshire, and would early 
have gone to Congress but for his stanch, inflexible Federalism. 

Daniel Webster, schoolmaster and law-student, was assuredly 
one of the most interesting of characters. Pinched by poverty, 
as he tells us, till his very bones ached, eking out his income by 
a kind of labor that he always loathed (copying deeds), his shoes 
letting in, not water merely, but " pebbles and stones," — father, 
brother, and himself sometimes all moneyless together, all dunned 
at the same time, and writing to one another for aid, — he was 
nevertheless as jovial a young fellow as any in New England. 
How merry and affectionate his letters to his young friends ! 
He writes to one, soon after leaving college : " You will natu- 
rally inquire how I prosper in the article of cash ; finely, finely ! 
I came here in January with a horse, watch, etc., and a few ras- 
cally counters in my pocket. Was soon obliged to sell my horse, 
and live on the proceeds. Still straitened for cash, I sold my 
watch, and made a shift to get home, where my friends supplied 
me with another horse and another watch. My horse is sold 
again, and my watch goes, I expect, this week; thus you see 



70 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

how I lay up cash." How like him ! To another college friend, 
James Hervey Bingham, whom he calls, by turns, " brother 
Jemmy," "Jemmy Hervey," and "Bingham," he discourses thus: 
" Perhaps you thought, as I did, that a dozen dollars would slide 
out of the pocket in a Commencement jaunt much easier than 
they would slide in again after you got home. That was the ex- 
act reason why I was not there I flatter myself that none 

of my friends ever tliought me greatly absorbed in the sin of 
avarice, yet I assure you, Jem, that in these days of poverty I 
look upon a round dollar with a great deal of complacency. 
These rascal dollars are so necessary to the comfort of life, that 
next to a fine wife they are most essential, and their acquisition 
an object of prime importance. O Bingham, how blessed it 
would be to retire with a decent, clever bag of Rixes to a pleas- 
ant country town, and follow one's own inclination without being 
shackled by the duties of a profession ! " To the same friend, 
whom he now addresses as " dear Squire," he announces joyfully 
a wondrous piece of luck : " My expenses [to Albany] were all 
amply paid, and on my return I put my hand in my pocket and 
found one hundred and twenty dear delightfuls ! Is not that 
good luck ? And these dear delightfuls were, 'pon honor, all my 
own ; yes, every dog of them ! " To which we may add from an- 
other source, that they were straightway transferred to his father, 
to whom they were dear delightfuls indeed, for he was really 
getting to the end of his tether. 

The schoolmaster lived, it appears, on the easiest terms with 
his pupils, some of whom were older than himself. He tells a 
story of falling in with one of them on his journey to school, 
who was mounted " on the ugliest horse I ever saw or heard of, 
except Sancho Panza's pacer." The schoolmaster having two 
good horses, the pupil mounted one of them, strapped his bag to 
his own forlorn animal and drove him before, where his odd gait 
and frequent stumblings kept them amused. At length, arriving 
at a deep and rapid river, " this satire on the animal creation, as 
if to revenge herself on us for our sarcasms, plunged into the 
river, then very high by the freshet, and was wafted down the 
current like a bag of oats ! I could hardly sit on my horse for 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 71 

langliter. I am apt to laugh at the vexations of my friends. 
The fellow, who was of my own age, and my room-mate, half 
checked the current by oaths as big as lobsters, and the old Rosi- 
nante, who was all the while much at her ease, floated up among 
the willows far below on the opposite side of the river." 

At the same time he was an innocent young man. If he had 
any wild oats in his composition, they were not sown in the days 
of his youth. Expecting to pass his life as a country lawyer, 
having scarcely a premonition of his coming renown, we find him 
enjoying the simple country sports and indulging in the simple 
village ambitions. He tried once for the captaincy of a company 
of militia, and was not elected ; he canvassed a whole regiment 
to get his brother the post of adjutant, and failed. At one time 
he came near abandoning the law, as too high and perilous for 
him, and settling down as schoolmaster and clerk of a court. 
The assurance of a certain six hundred dollars a year, a house, 
and a piece of land, with the prospect of the clerkship by and by, 
was so alluring to him that it required all the influence of his 
family and friends to make him reject the offer. Even then, in 
the flush and vigor of his youth, he was led. So was it always. 
He was never a leader, but always a follower. Nature made 
him very large, but so stinted him in propelling force, that it is 
doubtful if he had ever emerged from obscurity if his friends had 
not urged him on. His modesty in these innocent days is most 
touching to witness. After a long intei'nal conflict, he resolved, 
in his twentieth year, to " make one more ti'ial " at mastering the 
law. " If I prosecute the profession, I pray God to fortify me 
against its temptations. To the wind I dismiss those light hopes 
of eminence which ambition inspired and vanity fostered. To be 
' honest, to be capable, to be faithful ' to my client and my con- 
science, I earnestly hope will be my first endeavor." How ex- 
ceedingly astonished would these affectionate young friends have 
been, if they could have looked forward forty years, and seen the 
timid law-student Secretary of State, and his ardent young com- 
rade a clei'k in his department. They seemed equals in 1802; 
in 1845, they had grown so far apart, that the excellent Bingham 
writes to Webster as to a demisrod. 



72 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

In these pleasant early letters of Daniel Webster there are a 
thousand evidences of a good heart and of virtuous habits, but 
not one of a superior understanding. The total absence of the 
sceptical spirit marks the secondary mind. For a hundred and 
fifty years, no young man of a truly eminent intellect has ac- 
cepted his father's creeds without having first called them into 
question ; and this must be so in periods of transition. The 
glorious light which has been coming upon Christendom for the 
last two hundred years, and which is now beginning to pervade 
the remotest provinces of it, never illumined the mind of Daniel 
"Webster. Upon coming of age, he joined the Congregational 
Church, and was accustomed to open his school with an extem- 
pore prayer. He used the word " Deist " as a terra of reproach ; 
he deemed it " criminal " in Gibbon to write his fifteenth and 
sixteenth chapters, and spoke of that author as a " learned, proud, 
ingenious, foppish, vain, self-deceived man," who " from Protes- 
tant connections deserted to the Cliurch of Rome, and thence to 
the faith of Tom Paine." And he never delivered himself from 
this narrowness and ignorance. In the time of his celebrity, he 
preferred what Sir Walter Scott called " the genteeler religion of 
the two," the Episcopal. In his old age, his idea of a proper 
sermon was incredibly narrow and provincial. He is reported 
to have said, late in life : — 

" Many of the ministers of the present day take their text from St. 
Paul, and preach from the newspapers. When they do so, I prefer to 
enjoy my own thoughts rather than to listen. I want my pastor to 
come to me in the spirit of the Gospel, saying, ' You are mortal ! your 
probation is brief; your work must be done speedily ; you are im- 
mortal too. You are hastening to the bar of God ; the Judge standeth 
before the door.' When I am thus admonished, I have no disposition 
to muse or to sleep." 

This does not accord with what is usually observed in our 
churches, where sermons of the kind which Mr. Webster extolled 
dispose many persons to sleep, though not to muse. 

In the same unquestioning manner, he imbibed his father's 
political prejudices. We hear this young Federalist call the 
Republican party "the Jacobins," just as the reactionists and 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 73* 

tories of the present day speak of the present Republican party 
as " the radicals." It is amusing to hear him, in 1802, predict 
the speedy restoration to power of a party that was never again 
to taste its sweets. " Jacobinism and iniquity," he wrote in his 
twentieth year, " are so allied in signification, that the latter 
alw^ays follows the former, just as in grammar ' the accusative 
case follows the transitive verb.' " He speaks of a young friend 
as " too honest for a Democrat." As late as his twenty-second 
year, he was wholly unreconciled to Napoleon, and still wrote 
with truly English scorn of " Gallic tastes and Gallic principles." 
There is a fine burst in one of his letters of 1804, when he had 
been propelled by his brother to Boston to finish his law studies: — 

" Jerome, the brother of the Emperor of the Gauls, is here ; every 
day you may see him whisking along Cornhill, with the true French air, 
with his wife by his side. The lads say that they intend to prevail on 
American misses to receive company in future after the manner of 
Jerome's wife, that is, in bed. The gentlemen of Boston (i. e. we 
Feds) treat Monsieur Avith cold and distant respect. They feel, and 
every honest man feels, indignant at seeing this lordly grasshopper, this 
puppet in prince's clothes, dashing through the American cities, luxuri- 
ously rioting on the property of Dutch mechanics or Swiss peasants." 

This last sentence, written when he was twenty-two years old, 
is the first to be found in his published letters Avhich tells any- 
thing of the fire that was latent in him. He was of slow growth ; 
he was forty-eight years of age before his powers had reached 
their full development. 

When he had nearly completed his studies for the bar, he was 
again upon the point of abandoning the laborious career of a law- 
yer for a life of obscurity and ease. On this occasion, it was the 
clerkship of his father's court, salary fifteen hundred dollars a 
year, that tempted him. He jumped at the offer, which promised 
an immediate competency for the whole family, pinched and anx- 
ious for so many years. He had no thought but to accept it. 
"With the letter in his hand, and triumphant joy in his face, he 
communicated the news to Mr. Gore, his instructor in the law ; 
thinking of nothing, he tells us, but of '" rushing to the immediate 
enjoyment of the proffered office." Mr. Gore, however, exhibited 
4 



74 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

a provoking coolness on the subject. He said it was very civil 
in the judges to offer such a compliment to a brother on the 
bench, and, of course, a respectful letter of acknowledgment must 
be sent. The glowing countenance of the young man fell at these 
most unexpected and unwelcome words. They were, to use his 
own language, " a shower-bath of ice-water." The old lawyer, 
observing his crestfallen condition, reasoned seriously with him, 
and persuaded him, against his will, to continue his preparation 
for the bar. At every turning-point of his life, whenever he 
came to a parting of the ways, one of which must be chosen and 
the other forsaken, he required an impulse from without to push 
him into the path he was to go. Except once ! Once in his 
long public life, he seemed to ventui-e out alone on an unfamiliar 
road, and lost himself. Usually, when great powers are conferred 
on a man, there is also given him a strong propensity to exercise 
them, sufficient to carry him through all difficulties to the suitable 
sphere. Here, on the contrary, thei-e was a Great Eastern with 
only a Cunarder's engine, and it required a tug to get the great 
ship round to her course. 

Admitted to the bar in his twenty-third year, he dutifully went 
home to his father, and opened an office in a New Hampshire vil- 
lage near by, resolved never again to leave the generous old man 
while he lived. Before leaving Boston, he wrote to his friend 
Bingham, " If I am not earning my bread and cheese in exactly 
nine days after my admission, I shall certainly be a bankrupt " ; 
— and so, indeed, it proved. With great difficulty, he " hired " 
eighty-five dollars as a capital to begin business with, and this 
great sum was immediately lost in its transit by stage. To any 
other young man in his situation, such a calamity would have 
been, for the moment, crushing ; but this young man, indifferent 
to meum as to tuum, informs his brother that he can in no con- 
ceivable way replace the money, cannot therefore pay for the 
books he had bought, believes he is earning his daily bread, and 
as to the loss, he has " tio uneasy sensations on that accoimt." He 
concludes his letter with an old song, beginning, 

" Fol de dol, dol de dol, di dol, 
1 '11 never make money my idol." 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 75 

In the New Hampshire of 1805 there was no such thing pos- 
sible as leaping at once into a lucrative practice, nor even of 
slowly acquiring it. A country lawyer who gained a thousand 
dollars a year was among the most successful, and the leader of 
the bar in New Hampshire could not earn two thousand. The 
chief employment of Daniel "Webster, during the first year or 
two of his practice, Avas collecting debts due in New Hampshire 
to merchants in Boston. His first tin sign has been pi'eserved 
to the present day, to attest by its minuteness and brevity the 
humble expectations of its proprietor. " D. "Webster, Attorney," 
is the inscription it bears. The old Court-House still stands in 
which he conducted his first suit, before his own father as pre- 
siding judge. Old men in that part of New Hampshire wei'e liv- 
ing until within these few years, who remembered well seeing 
this tall, gaunt, and large-eyed young lawyer rise slowly, as 
though scarcely able to get upon his feet, and giving to every one 
the impression that he would soon be obliged to sit down froni 
mere physical weakness, and saying to his father, for the first and 
last time, " May it please your Honor." The sheriff of the coun- 
ty, who was also a "V\^ebster, used to say that he felt ashamed to 
see the family represented at the bar by so lean and feeble a 
young man. The tradition is, that he acquitted himself so well 
on this occasion that the sheriff was satisfied, and clients came, 
with their little suits and smaller fees, in considerable numbers, 
to the office of D. "Webster, Attorney, who thenceforth in the 
country round went by the name of " All-eyes." His father nev- 
er heard him speak again. He lived to see Daniel in successful 
practice, and Ezekiel a student of law, and died in 180G, prema- 
turely old. Daniel Webster practised three years in the country, 
and then, resigning his business to his brother, established him- 
self at Portsmouth, the seaport of New Hampshire, then a place 
of much foreign commerce. Ezekiel had had a most desperate 
struggle with poverty. At one time, when the family, as Daniel 
observed, was " heinously unprovided," we see the much-endur- 
ing " Zeke " teaching an Academy by day, an evening school for 
sailors, and keeping well up with his class in college besides. 
But these preliminary troubles were now at an end, and both 



76 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

the brothers took the places won by so much toil and self- 
sacrifice. 

Those are noble old towns on the New England coast, the 
commerce of which Boston swallowed up forty years ago, while 
it left behind many a large and liberally provided old mansion, 
with a family in it enriched by ventures to India and China. 
Strangers in Portsmouth are still struck by the largeness and 
elegance of the residences there, and wonder how such establish- 
ments can be maintained in a place that has little " visible means 
of support." It was while Portsmouth was an important seaport 
that Daniel Webster learned and practised law there, and 
acquired some note as a Federalist politician. 

The once celebrated Dr. Buckminster was the minister of the 
Congregational church at Portsmouth then. One Sunday morn- 
ing in 1808, his eldest daughter sitting alone in the minister's 
pew, a strange gentleman was shown into it, whose appearance 
and demeanor strongly arrested her attention. The slenderness 
of his frame, the pale yellow of his complexion, and the raven 
blackness of his hair, seemed only to bring out into grander 
relief his ample forehead, and to heighten the effect of his deep- 
set, brilliant eyes. At this period of his life there was an air of 
delicacy and refinement about his face, joined to a kind 
of strength that women can admire, without fearing. Miss Buck- 
minster told the family, when she went home from church, that 
there had been a remarkable person with her in the pew, — one 
that she was sure had " a marked character for good or evil." A 
few days after, the remarkable person came to live in the neigh- 
borhood, and was soon introduced to the minister's family as Mr. 
Daniel Webster, from Franklin, New Hampshire, who was about 
to open a law office in Portsmouth. He soon endeared himself 
to every person in the minister's circle, and to no one more than 
to the minister himself, who, among other services, taught him 
the art of preserving his health. The young man, like the old 
clergyman, was an early riser, up with the dawn in summer, and 
lona: before the dawn in winter ; and both were out of doors with 
the sun, each at one end of a long saw, cutting wood for an appe- 
tite. The joyous, uncouth singing and shouting of the new- 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 7T 

comer aroused the late sleepers. Then in to breakfast, where 
the homely, captivating humor of the young lawyer kept the 
table in a roar, and detained every inmate. " Never was there 
such an actor lost to the stage," Jeremiah Mason, his only 
rival at the New Hampshire bar, used to say, " as he would have 
made." Returning in the afternoon from court, fatigued and 
languid, his spirits rose again with food and rest, and the evening 
was another festival of conversation and reading. A few months 
after his settlement at Portsmouth he visited his native hills, 
saying nothing respecting the object of his journey ; and re- 
turned with a wife, — that gentle and high-bred lady, a clergy- 
man's daughter, who tvas the chief source of the happiness of 
his happiest years, and the mother of all his children. He im- 
proved in health, his form expanded, his mind grew, his talents 
ripened, his fame spread, during the nine years of his residence 
at this thriving and pleasant town. 

At Portsmouth, too, he had precisely that external stimulus to 
exertion which his large and pleasure-loving nature needed. 
Jeremiah Mason was, literally speaking, the giant of the Amer- 
ican bar, for he stood six feet seven inches in his stockings. Like 
Webster, he^ was the son of a valiant Revolutionary officer ; like 
"Webster, he was an hereditary Federalist ; like Webster, he had 
a great mass of brain : but his mind was more active and acquis- 
itive than Webster's, and his nineteen years of arduous practice 
at the bar had stored his memory with knowledge and given him 
dexterity in the use of it. Nothing shows the eminence of Web- 
ster's talents more than this, that, very early in his Portsmouth 
career, he should have been regarded at the bar of New Hamp- 
siiire as the man to be employed against Jeremiah Mason, and 
his only fit antagonist. Mason was a vigilant, vigorous opponent, 
— sure to be well up in the law and the facts of a cause, sure to 
detect a flaw in the argument of opposing counsel. It was in 
keen encounters with this wary and learned man that Daniel 
Webster learned his profession ; and this he always acknowl- 
edged. "If," he said once in conversation, — "if anybody thinks 
I am somewhat familiar with the law on some points, and should 
be curious to know how it happened, tell hun that Jeremiah 



78 DANIEL WEBSTEK. 

Mason compelled me to study it. He was my master." It is 
honorable, too, to both of them, that, rivals as they were, they 
were fast and affectionate friends, each valuing in the other the 
qualities in which he was surpassed by him, and each sincerely 
believing that the other was the first man of his time and coun- 
try. "They say," in Portsmouth, that Mason did not shrink 
from remonstrating with his friend upon his carelessness with 
regard to money; but, finding the habit inveterate and the man 
irresistible, desisted. Webster himself says that two thousand 
dollars a year was all that the best practice in New Hampshire 
could be made to yield ; and that that was inadequate to the sup- 
port of his family of a wife and three little children. Two 
thousand dollars in Portsmouth, in 1812, was certainly equal, in 
purchasing power, to six thousand of the ineffectual things that 
now pass by the name of dollars ; and upon such an income large 
families in a country town contrive to live, ride, and save. 

He was a strenuous Federalist at Portsmouth, took a leading 
part in the public meetings of the party, and won great distinc- 
tion as its frequent Fourth-of-July orator. All those mild and 
economical measures by which Mr. Jefferson sought to keep 
the United States from being drawn into the roaring vortex of 
the great wars in Europe, he opposed, and favored the policy of 
preparing the country for defence, not by gunboats and embar- 
goes, but by a powerful navy of frigates and ships of the line. 
His Fourth-of-July orations, if we may judge of them by the 
fragments that have been found, show that his mind had strength- 
ened more than it had advanced. His style wonderfully improved 
from eighteen to twenty-five ; and he tells us himself why it did. 
He discovered, he says, that the value, as well as the force, of a 
sentence, depends chiefly upon its meaning, not its language ; 
and that great writing is that in which much is said in few words, 
and those words the simplest tliat will answer the purpose. 
Having made this notable discovery, he became a great eraser of 
adjectives, and toiled after simplicity and directness. Mr. Everett 
quotes a i<iyj sentences from his Fourth-of-July oration of 1806, 
when he was twenty-four, which shows an amazing advance upon 
the effort of his eighteenth year, quoted above : — 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 79 

" Nothing is plainer than this : if we will have commerce, we must 
protect it. This country is commercial as well as agricultural. Tndis- 
soluUe hands connect Mm who ploughs (he land icith him tcho ploughs the 
sea. Nature has placed us in a situation favorable to commercial pur- 
suits, and no government can alter the destination. Habits confirmed 
by two centuries are not to be changed. An immense portion of our 
property is on the waves. Sixty or eighty thousand of our most useful 
citizens are there, and are entitled to such protection from the govern- 
ment as their case requires." 

How different this compact directness from the tremendous 
fulmination of the Dartmouth junior, who said : — 

" Columbia stoops not to tp'ants ; her spirit will never cringe to 
France ; neither a supercilious, five-headed Directory nor the gascon- 
ading pilgrim of Egypt will ever dictate terms to sovereign America. 
The thunder of our cannon shall insure the performance of our treaties, 
and fulminate destruction on Frenchmen, till the ocean is crimsoned 
with blood and gorged with pirates ! " 

The Fourth-of-July oration, which afterwards fell into some 
disrepute, had great importance in the earlier years of the Re- 
public, when Revolutionary times and perils were fresh in the 
recollection of the people. The custom arose of assigning this 
duty to young men covetous of distinction, and this led in time 
to the flighty rhetoric which made sounding emptiness and a 
Fourth-of-July oration synonymous terms. The feeling that 
was real and spontaneous in the sons of Revolutionary soldiers 
was sometimes feigned or exaggerated in the young law students 
of the next generation, who had merely read the history of the 
Revolution. But with all the faults of those compositions, they 
were eminently serviceable to the country. We believe that to 
them is to be attributed a considerable part of that patriotic feel- 
ing which, after a suspended animation of several years, awoke 
in the spring of 18G1 and asserted itself with such unexpected 
power, and which sustained the country during four years of a 
peculiarly disheartening war. How pleasant and spirit-stirring 
was a celebration of the Fourth of July as it was conducted in 
"Webster's early day ! We trust the old customs will be revived 
and improved upon, and become universal. Nor is it any objec- 



80 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

tion to the practice of having an oration, that the population is 
too large to be reached in that way ; for if only a thousand hear, 
a million may read. Nor ought we to object if the orator is a 
little more flowery and boastful than becomes an ordinary occa- 
sion. There is a time to exult ; there is a time to abandon our- 
selves to pleasant recollections and joyous hopes. Therefore, we 
say, let the young men reappear upon the platform, and show 
what metal they are made of by giving the best uttei'ance they 
can to the patriotic feelings of the people on the national anniver- 
sary. The Republic is safe so long as we celebrate that day in 
the spirit of 1776 and 1861. 

At least we may assert that it was Mr. Webster's Fourth-of- 
July orations, of which he delivered five in eleven years, that 
first made him known to the people of New Hampshire. At 
that period the two political parties could not unite in the cele- 
bration of the day, and accordingly the orations of Mr. Webster 
had much in them that could be agreeable only to Federalists. 
He was an occasional speaker, too, in those years, at meetings of 
Federalists, where his power as an orator was sometimes exerted 
most effectively. No speaker could be better adapted to a New 
England audience, accustomed from of old to weighty, argumen- 
tative sermons, delivered with deliberate, unimpassioned earnest- 
ness. There are many indications that a speech by Daniel Web- 
ster in Portsmouth in 1810 excited as much expectation and 
comment as a speech by the same person in the Senate twenty 
years after. But he was a mere Federalist partisan, — no more. 
It does not appear that he had anything to offer to his country- 
men beyond the stately expression of party issues ; and it was as 
a Federalist, pure and simple, that he was elected, in 1812, a 
member of the House of Representatives, after a keenly con- 
tested party conflict. His majority over the Republican candi- 
date was 2,546, — the whole number of voters being 34,648. 

The Federalists, from 1801 to 1825, were useful to the coun- 
try only as an Opposition, — just as the pi'esent Tory party in 
England can be only serviceable in its capacity of critic and hold- 
back. The Federalists under John Adams had sinned past for- 
giveness ; while the Republican party, strong in being right, in 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 81 

the ability of its chiefs, in its alliance with Southern aristocrats, 
and in having possession of the government, was strong also in 
the odium and inconsistencies of its opponents. Nothing could 
shake the confidence of the people in the administration of 
Thomas Jefferson. But the stronger a party is, the more it needs 
an Opposition, — as we saw last winter in "Washington, when the 
minority was too insignificant in numbers and ability to keep the 
too powerful majority from doing itself such harm as might have 
been fatal to it but for the President's well-timed antics. Next 
to a sound and able majority, the great need of a free country is 
a vigorous, vigilant, audacious, numerous minority. Better a 
factious and unscrupulous minority than none at all. The Fed- 
eralists, who could justly claim to have among them a very large 
proportion of the rich men and the educated men of the country, 
performed the humble but useful service of keeping an eye upon 
the measures of the administration, and finding fault with every 
one of them. Daniel Webster, however, was wont to handle 
only the large topics. While Mr. Jefferson was struggling to 
keep the peace with Great Britain, he censured the policy as 
timorous, costly, and ineffectual ; but when Mr. Madison declared 
war against that power, he deemed the act unnecessary and rash. 
His opposition to the war was never carried to the point of giving 
aid and comfort to the enemy ; it was such an opposition as patri- 
otic " War Democrats " exhibited during the late Rebellion, who 
thought the war might have been avoided, and ought to be con- 
ducted more vigorously, but nevertheless stood by their country 
without a shadow of swerving. 

He could boast, too, that from his boyhood to the outbreak of 
the war he had advocated the building of the very ships which 
gave the infant nation its first taste of warlike glory. The Re- 
publicans of that time, forgetful of what Paul Jones and others 
of Dr. Franklin's captains had done in the war of the Revolution, 
supposed that, because England had a thousand ships in commis- 
sion, and America only seventeen, therefore an American ship 
could not venture out of a harbor without being taken. We have 
often laughed at Colonel Benton's ludicrous confession of his own 
terrors on this subject. 

4 * I> 



82 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

" Political men," lie says, " believed nothing could be done at sea but 
to lose the few vessels which we had ; that even cruising was out of 
the question. Of our seventeen vessels, the whole were in port but 
one ; and it was determined to keep them there, and the one at sea 
with tliem, if it had the luck to get in. I am under no obligation to 
make the admission, but I am free to acknowledge that I was one of 
those who supposed that there was no salvation for our seventeen men- 
of-war but to run them as far up the creek as possible, place them un- 
der the guns of batteries, and collect camps of militia about them to 
keep off the British. This was the policy at the day of the declara- 
tion of the war ; and I have the less concern to admit myself to have 
been participator in the delusion, because I claim the merit of having 
profited from experience, — happy if I could transmit the lesson to 
posterity. Two officers came to Washington, — Bainbridge and Stew- 
art. They spoke with Mr. Madison, and urged the feasibility of cruis- 
injr. One half of the whole number of the British men-of-war were 
under the class of frigates, consequently no more than matches for 
some of our seventeen ; the whole of her merchant marine (many thou- 
sands) were subject to capture. Here was a i-ich field for cruising ; 
and the two ofiicers, for themselves and brothers, boldly proposed to 
enter it. 

" Mr. Madison had seen the efficiency of cruising and privateering, 
even against Great Britain, and in our then infantile condition, during 
the war of the Revolution ; and besides was a man of sense, and amen- 
able to judgment and reason. He listened to the two experienced and 
valiant officers ; and without consulting Congress, which perhaps would 
have been a fatal consultation (for multitude of counsellors is not the 
counsel for hold decision), reversed the policy which had been resolved 
upon ; and, in his supreme character of constitutional commander of 
the army and navy, ordered every ship that could cruise to get to sea 
as soon as jiossible. This I had from Mr. Monroe." 

This is a curious example of the blinding effect of partisan 
strife, and of the absolute need of an Opposition. It was the 
hereditary prejudice of the Republicans against the navy, as an 
"aristocratic" institution, and the hereditary love of the navy 
cherished by the Federalists as being something stable and Brit- 
ish, that enlivened the debates of the war. The Federalists had 
their way, but failed to win a partisan advantage from the fact, 
through their factious opposition to the military measures of the 
administration. Because the first attempt at the seizure of Can- 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 83 

ada had failed through the incompetency of General Hull, which 
no wisdom of man could have foreseen, Daniel Webster called 
upon the government to discontinue all further attempts on the 
land, and fight the war out on the sea. " Give up your futile 
projects of invasion," said he in 1814. " Extinguish the fires 
that blaze on your inland borders." " Unclench the iron grasp 
of your embargo." " With all the war of the enemy on your 
commerce, if you would cease to make war upon it yourselves, 
you would still have some commerce. That commerce would 
give you some revenue. Apply that revenue to the augmentation 
of your navy. That navy, in turn, will protect your commerce." 
In war time, however, there are tivo powers that have to do with 
the course of events ; and very soon the enemy, by his own great 
scheme of invasion, decided the policy of the United States. 
Every port was blockaded so effectively that a pilot-boat could 
not safely go out of sight of land, and a frigate was captured 
within sight of it. These vigilant blockaders, together with the 
threatening armament which finally attacked New Orleans, com- 
pelled every harbor to prepare for defence, and most effectually 
refuted Mr. Webster's speech. The " blaze of glory " with which 
the war ended at New Orleans consumed all the remaining pres- 
tige of the Federalist party, once so powerful, so respectable, and 
so arrogant. 

A member of the anti-war party during the existence of a war 
occupies a position which can only cease to be insignificant by the 
raisfoi'tunes of his country. But when we turn from the partisan 
to the man, we perceive that Daniel Webster was a great pres- 
ence in the House, and took rank immediately with the half- 
dozen ablest debaters. His self-possession was perfect at all 
times, and at thirty-three he was still in the spring and first lustre 
of his powers. His weighty and deliberate manner, the brevity, 
force, and point of his sentences, and the moderation of his ges- 
tures, were all in strong contrast to the flowing, loose, impassioned 
manner of the Southern orators, who ruled the House. It was 
something like coming upon a stray number of the old Edinburgh 
Review in a heap of novels and Ladies' Magazines. Chief-Jus- 
tice Marshall, who heard his first speech, being himself a Feder- 



84 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

alist, was so much delighted to hear his own opinions expressed 
with such power and dignity, that he left the House, believing 
that this stranger from far-off New Hampshire was destined to 
become, as he said, "one of the very first statesmen of America, 
and perhaps the very first." His "Washington fame gave him new 
eclat at home. He was re-elected, and came back to Congress in 
1815, to aid the Federalists in preventing the young Republicans 
from being too Federal. 

This last sentence slipped from the pen unawares ; but, ridic- 
ulous as it looks, it does actually express the position and voca- 
tion of the Federalists after the peace of 1815. Clay, Calhoun, 
Story, Adams, and the Republican majority in Congress, taught 
by the disasters of the war, as they supposed, had embraced the 
ideas of the old Federalist party, and were preparing to carry 
some of them to an extreme. The navy had no longer an enemy. 
The strict constructionists had dwindled to a few impracticables, 
headed by John Randolph. The younger Republicans were dis- 
posed to a liberal, if not to a latitudinarian construction of the 
Constitution. In short, they were Federalists and Hamiltonians, 
bank men, tariff men, internal-improvement men. Then was 
afforded to the country the curious spectacle of Federalists 
opposing the measures which had been among the rallying-cries 
of their party for twenty years. It was not in Daniel Webster's 
nature to be a leader ; it was morally impossible for him to dis- 
engage himself from party ties. This exquisite and consummate 
artist in oratory, who could give such weighty and brilliant 
expression to the feelings of his hearers and the doctrines of his 
party, had less originating power, whether of intellect or of will, 
than any other man of equal eminence that ever lived. He ad- 
hered to the fag end of the old party, until it was absorbed, 
unavoidably, with scarcely an effort of its own, in Adams and 
Clay. From 1815 to 1825 he was in opposition, and in opposi- 
tion to old Federalism revived ; and, consequently, we believe 
that posterity will decide that his speeches of this period are the 
only ones relating to details of policy which have the slightest 
permanent value. In fact, his position in Congress, as a member 
of a very small band of Federalists who had no hope of regain- 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 85 

ing power, was the next thing to being independent, and he made 
an excellent use of his advantage. 

That Bank of the United States, for example, of which, in 
1832, he was the ablest defender, and for a renewal of which he 
strove for ten years, he voted against in 1816; and for reasons 
which neither he nor any other man ever refuted. His speeches 
criticising the various bank schemes of 1815 and 1816 were 
serviceable to the public, and made the bank, as finally estab- 
lished, less harmful than it might have been. 

So of the tariff. On this subject, too, he always followed, — 
never led. So long as there was a Federal party, he, as a mem- 
ber of it, opposed Mr. Clay's protective, or (as Mr. Clay de- 
lighted to term it) "American system." When, in 1825, the few 
Federalists in the House voted for Mr. Adams, and were merged 
in the "conservative wing" of the Republican party, which 
became, in time, the Whig party, then, and from that time for- 
ward to the end of his life, he was a protectionist. His anti-pro- 
tection speech of 1824 is wholly in the modern spirit, and takes 
precisely the ground since taken by Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, 
and others of the new school. It is so excellent a statement of 
the true policy of the United States with regard to protection, 
that we have often wondered it has been allowed to sleep so 
long in the tomb of his works. And, oh ! from what evils might 
we have been spared, — nullification, surplus-revenue embarrass- 
ments, hot-bed manufactures, clothing three times its natural 
price, — if the protective legislation of Congress had been 
inspired by the Webster of 1824, instead of the Clay ! Unim- 
portant as this great speech may now seem, as it lies uncut in 
the third volume of its author's speeches, its unturned leaves 
sticking together, yet we can say of it, that the whole course of 
American history had been diflferent if its counsels had been 
followed. The essence of the speech is contained in two of its 
phrases : " Freedom of trade, the general principle ; restriction, 
the exception." Free trade, the object to be aimed at ; protec- 
tion, a temporary expedient. Free trade, the interest of all 
nations ; protection, the occasional necessity of one. Free trade, 
the final and universal good;' protection, the sometimes necessary 



86 ■ DANIEL WEBSTER. 

evil. Free trade, as soon as possible and as complete as possi- 
ble ; protection, as little as possible and as short as possible. 

The speech was delivered in reply to Mr. Clay ; and, viewed 
merely as a reply, it is diflicult to conceive of one more trium- 
phant. Mr. Webster was particularly happy in turning Mr. 
Clay's historical illustrations against him, especially those drawn 
from the history of the English silk manufacture, and the Spanish 
system of restriction and prohibition. Admitting fully that manu- 
factures the most unsuited to the climate, soil, and genius of a 
country could be created by protection, he showed that such man- 
ufactures were not, upon the whole, and in the long run, a bene- 
fit to a country; and adduced, for an illustration, the very instance 
cited by Mr. Clay, — the silk manufacture of England, — which 
kept fifty thousand persons in misery, and necessitated the con- 
tinuance of a kind of legislation which the intelligence of Great 
Britain had outgrown. Is not the following brief passage an al- 
most exhaustive statement of the true American policy ? 

" I know it would be very easy to promote manufactures, at least for 
a time, but probably for a short time only, if we might act in disregard 
of other interests. We could cause a sudden transfer of capital and a 
violent change in the pursuits of men. We could exceedingly benefit 
some classes by these means. But what then becomes of the interests 
of others? The power of collecting revenue by duties on imports, 
and the habit of the government of collecting almost its whole revenue 
in that mode, will enable us, without exceeding the bounds of modera- 
tion, to give great advantages to those classes of manufactures which 
we may think most useful to promote at home." 

One of his happy retorts upon Mr. Clay was the following : — 

" I will be so presumptuous as to take up a challenge which Mr. 
Speaker has thrown down. He has asked us, in a tone of interrogatory 
indicative of the feeling of anticipated triumph, to mention any coun- 
try in which manufactures have flourished without the aid of prohibi- 
tory laws Sir, I am ready to answer this inquiry. 

" There Is a country, not undistinguished among the nations, in 
which the progress of manufactures has been more rapid than in any 
other, and yet unaided by prohibitions or unnatural restrictions. That 
country, the happiest which the sun shines on. Is our own." 

Again, Mr. Clay had made the rash remark that it would cost 



DANIEL WEDSTEE. 87 

the nation, as a nation, nothing to convert our ore into iron. Mr. 
Webster's reply to this seems to us eminently worthy of consider- 
ation at the present moment, and at every moment when the tariff 
is a topic of debate. 

" I think," said he, " it would cost us precisely what we can least 

afford, that is, great labor Of manual labor no nation has more 

than a certain quantity ; nor can it be increased at will A most 

important question for every nation, as well as for every individual, to 
propose to itself. Is, how it can best apply that quantity of labor which 

it is able to perform Now, with respect to the quantity of labor, 

as we all know, different nations are differently circumstanced. Some 
need, more than anything, work for hands ; others require hands for 
work; and If we ourselves are not absolutely in the latter class, we are 
still, most fortunately, very near it." 

The applicability of these observations to the present condition 
of affairs in the United States — labor very scarce, and protec- 
tionists clamoring to make it scarcer — must be apparent to every 
reader. 

But this was the last of Mr. Webster's efforts in behalf of the 
freedom of trade. In the spring of 1825, when it devolved upon 
the House of Representatives to elect a President, the few Fed- 
eralists remaining in the House became, for a few days, an im- 
portant body. Mr. Webster had an hereditary love for the house 
of Adams ; and the aged Jefferson himself had personally warned 
him against Andrew Jackson. Webster it was who, in an inter- 
view with Ml'. Adams, obtained such assurances as determined 
the Federalists to give their vote for the New England candi- 
date ; and thus terminated the existence of the great party which 
Hamilton had founded, with which Washington had sympathized, 
wliich had ruled the country for twelve years, and maintained a 
vigorous and useful opposition for a quarter of a century. Daniel 
Webster was in opposition no longer. He was a defender of the 
administration of Adams and Clay, supported all their important 
measures, and voted for, nay, advocated, the Tariff Bill of 1828, 
wdiich went far beyond that of 1824 in its protective provisions. 
Taunted with such a remarkable and sudden change of opinion, 
be said that, New England having been compelled by the act of 



88 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

1824 to transfer a large part of her capital from commerce to 
manufactures, he was bound, as her representative, to demand 
the continuance of the system. Few persons, probably, who 
heard him give this reason for his conversion, believed it was 
the true one ; and few will ever believe it who shall intimately 
know the transactions of that winter in Washington. But if it 
was the true reason, Mr. Webster, in giving it, ruled himself out 
of the rank of the Great, — ■ who, in every age and land, lead, 
not follow, their generation. In his speech of 1824 he objects to 
the protective system on general principles, applicable to every 
case not clearly exceptional ; and the further Congress was dis- 
posed to carry an erroneous system, the more was he bound to 
lift up his voice against it. It seems to us that, when he aban- 
doned the convictions of his own mind and took service under 
Mr. Clay, he descended (to use the fine simile of the author of 
"Felix Holt") from the rank of heroes to that of the multitude 
for whom heroes fight. He was a protectionist, thenceforth, as 
long as he lived. If he was right in 1824, how wrong he was in 
1846! In 1824 he pointed to the high wages of American me- 
chanics as a proof that the protective system was unnecessary ; 
and he might have quoted Adam Smith to show that, in 1770, 
wages in the Colonies were just as high, compared with wages 
in Europe, as in 1824. In 1846 he attributed high wages in 
America to the operation of the protective system. In 1824 
free trade was the good, and restriction the evil ; in 1846 restric- 
tion was the good, and free trade the evil. 

Practical wisdom, indeed, was not in this man. He was not 
formed to guide, but to charm, impress, and rouse mankind. 
His advocacy of the Greek cause, in 1824, events have shown to 
be unwise ; but his speech on this subject contains some passages 
so exceedingly fine, noble, and harmonious, that we do not believe 
they have ever been surpassed in extempore speech by any man 
but himself. The passage upon Public Opinion, for example, is 
always read with delight, even by those who can call to mind the 
greatest number of instances of its apparent untruth. 

" The time has been, indeed, when fleets, and armies, and subsidies 
were the principal reliances, even in the best cause. But, happily for 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 89 

mankind, a gi-eat change has taken place in this respect. Moral causes 
come into consideration in proportion as the progress of knowledge is 
advanced ; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly- 
gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force It may be silenced 

by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressi- 
ble, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It is that 
impassible, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, 
which, like Milton's angels, 

' Vital in every part, .... 
Cannot, but by annihilating, die.' 

Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is vain for power to talk 
either of triumphs or of repose. No matter what fields are desolated, 
what forti'esses surrendered, what armies subdued, or what provinces 

overrun There is an enemy that still exists to check the glory 

of these triumphs. It follows the conqueror back to the very scene of 
his ovations ; it calls upon him to take notice that Europe, though silent, 
is yet indignant ; it shows him that the sceptre of his victory is a barren 
sceptre ; that it shall confer neither joy nor honor ; but shall moulder 
to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his exultation, it pierces his 
ear with the cry of injured justice ; it denounces against him the indig- 
nation of an enlightened and civilized age ; it turns to bitterness the 
cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the sting which belongs to 
the consciousness of having outraged the opinion of mankind." — 
Works, Vol. ni. pp. 77, 78. 

Yes : if the conqueror had the moral feeling which inspired 
this passage, and if the cry of injured justice could pierce the 
flattering din of office-seekers surrounding him. But, reading the 
paragraph as the expression of a hope of what may one day be, 
how grand and consoling it is ! The information given in this 
fine oration respecting the condition of Greece and the history of 
her struggle for independence was provided for him by the indus- 
try of his friend, Edward Everett. 

One of the minor tiiumphs of Mr. "Webster's early Congres- 
sional life was his conquest of the heart of John Randolph. In 
the course of a debate on the sugar tax, in 1816, Mr. Webster 
had the very common fortune of offending the irascible member 
from Virginia, and Mr. Randolph, as his custom was, demanded 
an explanation of the offensive words. Explanation was re- 
fused by the member from Massachusetts ; whereupon Mr. Ran- 



90 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

dolph demanded " tbe satisfaction which his insulted feelings re- 
quired." Mr. Webster's reply to this preposterous demand was 
everything tliat it ought to have been. He told Mr. Randolph 
that he had no right to an explanation, and that the temper and 
style of the demand were such as to forbid its being conceded as 
a matter of courtesy. He denied, too, the right of any man to 
call him to the field for what he might please to consider an in- 
sult to his feelings, although he should be " always prepared to 
repel in a suitable manner the aggression of any man who may 
presume upon such a refusal." The eccentric Virginian was so 
much pleased with Mr. Webster's bearing upon this occasion, that 
he manifested a particular regard for him, and pronounced him a 
very able man for a Yankee. 

It was during these years that Daniel Webster became dear, 
beyond all other men of his time, to the peojile of New England. 
Removing to Boston in 1816, and remaining out of Congress for 
some years, he won the first place at the New England bar, and 
a place equal to the foremost at the bar of the Supreme Court 
of the United States. Not one of his legal arguments has been 
exactly reported, and some of the most important of them we 
possess merely in outline ; but in such reports as we have, the 
weight and clearness of his mind are abundantly apparent. In 
almost every argiiment of his, there can be found digressions 
which relieve the strained attention of the bench, and please the 
unlearned hearer; and he had a happy way of suddenly crys- 
tallizing his argument into one luminous phrase, which often 
seemed to prove his case by merely stating it. Thus, in the 
Dartmouth College case, he made a rare display of learning (fur- 
nished him by associate counsel, he tells us) ; but his argument 
is concentrated in two of his simplest sentences: — 1. The en- 
dowment of a college is private property ; 2. The charter of a 
college is that which constitutes its endowment private property. 
The Supreme Court accepted these two propositions, and thus 
secured to every college in the counti'y its right to its endowment. 
This seems too simple for argument, but it cost a prodigious and 
powerfully contested lawsuit to reduce the question to this sim- 
plicity ; and it was Webstei-'s large, calm, and discriminating 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 91 

glance which detected these two fundamental truths in the moun- 
tain mass of testimony, argument, and judicial decision. In ar- 
guing the great steamboat case, too, he displayed the same quali- 
ties of mind. New York having granted to Livingston and 
Fulton the exclusive right to navigate her waters by steamboats, 
certain citizens of New Jersey objected, and, after a fierce strug- 
gle upon the waters themselves, transferred the contest to the 
Supreme Court. Mr. Webster said: "The commerce of the 
United States, under the Constitution of 1787, is a unit," and 
" what we call the waters of the State of New York are, for the 
purposes of navigation and commerce, the waters of the United 
States " ; therefore no State can grant exclusive privileges. Tlie 
Supreme Court affirmed this to be the true doctrine, and thence- 
forth Captain Cornelius Vanderbilt ran his steamboat without 
feeling it necessary, on approaching New York, to station a lady 
at the helm and to hide himself in the hold. Along with this 
concentrating power, Mr. Webster possessed, as every school-boy 
knows, a fine talent for amplification and narrative. His narra- 
tion of the murder of Captain White was almost enough of itself 
to hang a man. 

But it was not his substantial services to his country which 
drew upon him the eyes of all New England, and made him dear 
to every son of the Pilgrims. In 1820, the Pilgrim Society of 
Plymouth celebrated the anniversary of the landing of their fore- 
fathers in America. At the dinner of the Society, that day, 
every man found beside his plate five kernels of corn, to remind 
him of the time when that was the daily allowance of the set- 
tlers, and it devolved upon Daniel Webster to show how worthy 
they were of better fare. His address on this anniversary is but 
an amplification of his Junior Fourth-of-July oration of 1800 ; 
but what an amplification ! It differed from that youthful essay 
as the first flights of a young eagle, from branch to branch up- 
on its native tree, differ from the sweep of his wings when he 
takes a continent in his flight, and swings from mountain range 
to mountain range. We are aware that eulogy is, of all the 
kinds of composition, the easiest to execute in a tolerable 
manner. What Mr. Everett calls "patriotic eloquence" should 



92 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

usually be left to persons who are in the gushing time of life ; 
for when men address men, they should say something, clear up 
something, help forward something, accomplish something. It 
is not becoming; in a full-crown man to utter melodious wind. 
Nevertheless, it can be truly said of this splendid and irresistible 
oration, that it carries that kind of composition as far as we can 
ever expect to see it carried, even in this its native land. What 
a triumphant joy it must have been to an audience, accustomed 
for three or four generations to regard preaching as the noblest 
Avork of man, keenly susceptible to all the excellences of uttered 
speech, and who now heard their plain old fathers and grand- 
fathers praised in such massive and magnificent English ! Nor 
can it be said that this speech says nothing. In 1820 it was still 
part of the industry of New England to fabricate certain articles 
required by slave-traders in their hellish business ; and there 
were still descendants of the Pilgrims who were actually en- 
gaged in the traffic. 

" If there be," exclaimed the orator, " within the extent of our knowl- 
edge or influence any participation in this traffic, let us pledge our- 
selves here, upon the rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. 
It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. 
I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where 
manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visa- 
ges of those who by stealth and at midnight labor in this work of hell, 
foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of 
misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of 
New England."— Works, Vol. I. pp. 45, 46. 

And he proceeds, in language still more energetic, to call upon 
his countrymen to purge their land of this iniquity. This ora- 
tion, widely circulated through the press, gave the orator uni- 
versal celebrity in the Northern States, and was one of the many 
causes which secui-ed his continuance in the national councils. 

Such was his popularity in Boston, that, in 1824, he was re- 
elected to Congress by 4,990 votes out of 5,000 ; and such was 
his celebrity in his profession, that his annual retainers from 
banks, insurance companies, and mercantile firms yielded an in- 
come that would have satisfied most lawyers even of great emi- 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 93 

nence. Those were not the times of five-thousand-dollar fees. 
As late as 1819, as we see in Mr. Webster's books, he gave "ad- 
vice " in important cases for twenty dollars ; his regular retaining 
fee was fifty dollars ; his " annual retainer," one hundred dollars ; 
his whole charge for conducting a cause rarely exceeded five hun- 
dred dollars ; and the income of a whole year averaged about 
twenty thousand dollars. Twenty years later, he has gained a 
larger sum than that by the trial of a single cause ; but in 1820 
such an income was immense, and probably not exceeded by that 
of any other American lawyer. Most lawyers in the United 
States, he once said, " live well, work hard, and die poor " ; and 
this is particularly likely to be the case with lawyers who spend 
six months of the year in Congress. 

Northern members of Congress, from the foundation of the 
government, have usually gratified their ambition only by the 
sacrifice of their interests. The Congress of the United States, 
modelled upon the Parliament of Great Britain, finds in the 
North no suitable class of men who can afibrd to be absent from 
their affairs half the year. We should naturally choose to be 
represented in Washington by men distinguished in their several 
spheres ; but in the North, almost all such persons are so involved 
in business that they cannot accept a seat in Congress, except at 
the peril of their fortune ; and this inconvenience is aggravated 
by the habits that prevail at the seat of government. In the case 
of a lawyer like Daniel Webster, who has a large practice in the 
Supreme Court, the difficulty is diminished, because he can usu- 
ally attend the court without seriously neglecting his duties in 
Congress, — usually, but not always. There was one year in the 
Congressional life of Mr. Webster when he was kept out of the 
Supreme Court for four months by the high duty that devolved 
upon him of refuting Calhoun's nullification subtilties ; but even 
in that year, his professional income was more than seven thou- 
sand dollars ; and he ought by that time, after thirty years of 
most successful practice, to have been independent of his profes- 
sion. He was not, however ; and never would have been, if he 
had practised a century. Those habits of profusion, that reck- 
less disregard of pecuniary considerations, of which we noticed 



94 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

indications in his early days, seemed to be part of liis moral con- 
stitution. He never appeared to know liovv much money he had, 
nor how much he owed ; and, what was worse, he never appeared 
to care. He was a profuse giver and a careless payer. It was 
far easier for him to send a hundred-dollar note in reply to a beg- 
ging letter, than it was to discharge a long-standing account ; and 
■when he had wasted his resources in extravagant and demoraliz- 
ing gifts, he deemed it a sufficient answer to a presented bill to ask 
his creditor how a man could pay money who had none. 

It is not true, therefore, that the frequent embarrassments of 
his later years were due to the loss of practice by his attendance 
in Congress ; because, in the years when his professional gains 
were smallest, his income was large enough for the wants of any 
reasonable man. Nevertheless, we cannot deny that when, in 

1827, by his acceptance of a seat in the Senate, he gave himself 
permanently to public life, he made a sacrifice of his pecuniary 
interests which, for a man of such vast requirements and uncalcu- 
lating habits, was very great. 

But his reward was also very great. On that elevated the- 
atre he soon found an opportunity for the display of his talents, 
■which, while it honored and served his country, rendered him the 
foremost man in that part of it where such talents as his could 
be appreciated. 

All wars of which we have any knowledge have consisted of 
two parts: first, a war of words; secondly, the conflict of arms. 
The war of words which issued in the late Rebellion began, in 

1828, by the publication of Mr. Calhoun's first paper upon Nullifi- 
cation, called the South Carolina Exposition ; and it ended in 
April, 1861, when President Lincoln issued his call for seventy- 
five thousand troops, which excited so much merriment at Mont- 
gomery. This was a period of thirty-three years, during which 
every person in the United States who could use either tongue 
or pen joined in the strife of words, and contributed his share 
either toward hastening or postponing the final appeal to the 
sword. Men fight with one another, says Dr. Franklin, because 
they have not sense enough to settle their disputes in any other 
way ; and when once they have begun, never stop killing one 



DANIEL WEBSTER. • 95 

another as long as they have money enongli " to pay the butch- 
ers." So it appeared in our case. Of all the men who took 
part in this preliminary war of words, Daniel Webster was 
incomparably the ablest. He seemed charged with a message 
and a mission to the people of the United States ; and almost 
everything that he said in his whole life of real value lias refer- 
ence to that message and that mission. The necessity of the 
Union of these States, the nature of the tie that binds them 
together, the means by which alone that tie can be kept strong, 
— this was what he came charged to impart to us ; and when he 
had fully delivered this message, he had done his work. His 
numberless speeches upon the passing questions of the day, — • 
tariff. Bank, currency, Sub-treasury, and the rest, — in which 
the partisan spoke rather than the man, may have had their 
value at the time, but there is little in them of durable worth. 
Those of them which events have not refuted, time has rendered 
obsolete. No general principles are established in them which 
can be applied to new cases. Indeed, he used often to assert 
that there ivere no general principles in practical statesmanship, 
but that the government of nations is, and must be, a series of 
expedients. Several times, in his published works, can be found 
the assertion, that there is no such thing as a science of political 
economy, though he says he had "turned over" all the authors 
on that subject from Adam Smith to his own time. It is when 
he speaks of the Union and the Constitution, and when he is 
rousing the sentiment of nationality, that he utters, not, indeed, 
eternal truths, but truths necessary to the existence of the United 
States, and which can only become obsolete when the nation is 
no more. 

The whole of his previous life had been an unconscious prep- 
aration for these great debates. It was one of the recollections 
of his childhood, that, in his eighth year, he had bought a hand- 
kerchief upon which was printed the Constitution of 1787, which 
he then read through ; and while he was a farmer's boy at home, 
the great question of its acceptance or rejection had been decided. 
His father's party was the party for the Constitution, whose only 
regret concerning it was, that it was not so much of a constitution 



96 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

as they wished it to be. The Republicans dwelt upon its defects 
and dangers ; the Federalists, upon its advantages and beauties : 
so that all that this receptive lad heard of it at his father's fire- 
side was of its value and necessity. We see in his youthful 
orations that nothing in the history of the continent struck his 
imagination so powerfully as the spectacle of thirty-eight gentle- 
men meeting in a quiet city, and peacefully settling the terms of 
a national union between thirteen sovereign States, most of which 
gave up, voluntarily, what the sword alone was once supposed 
capable of extorting. In all his orations on days of national 
festivity or mourning, we observe that his weightiest eulogy falls 
upon those who were conspicuous in this great business. Because 
Hamilton aided in it, he revered his memory ; because Madison 
was its best interpreter, he venerated his name and deferred 
absolutely to his judgment. It was clear to his mind that the 
President can only dismiss an officer of the government as he 
appoints him, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate ; 
but he would not permit himself to think so against Mr. Madi- 
son's decision. His own ti'iumphs at the bar — those upon which 
he plumed himself — were all such as resulted from his lonely 
broodings over, and patient study of, the Constitution of his 
country. A native of one of the smallest of the States, to which 
the Union was an unmixed benefit and called for no sacrifice of 
pride, he grew up into nationality without having to pass through 
any probation of States' rights scruples. Indeed, it was as natu- 
ral for a man of his calibre to be a national man as it is for his 
own Monadnock to be three thousand feet above the level of the 
sea. 

The South Carolina Exposition of 1828 appeared to fall still- 
born from the press. Neither General Jackson nor any of his 
nearest friends seem to have been so much as aware of its ex- 
istence ; certainly they attached no importance to it. Colonel 
Benton assures us, that to him the Hayne debate, so far as it re- 
lated to constitutional questions, seemed a mere oratorical display, 
without adequate cause or object ; and we know that General 
Jackson, intimately allied with the Hayne family and strongly 
attached to Colonel Hayne himself, wished him success in the de- 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 97 

bate, and heard with regret that Mr. Webster was " demolishing " 
him. Far, indeed, was any one from supposing that a movement 
had been set on foot which was to end only with the total destruc- 
tion of the " interest " sought to be protected by it. Far was any 
one from foreseeing that so poor and slight a thing as the Expo- 
sition was the beginning of forty years of strife. It is evident 
from the Banquo passage of Mr. Webster's principal speech, 
when, looking at Vice-President Calhoun, he reminded that am- 
l)itious man that, in joining the coalition which made Jackson 
President, he had only given Van Buren a push toward the 
Presidency, — " No son of theirs succeeding," — it is evident, we 
say, from this passage, and from other covert allusions, that he 
understood the game of Nullification from the beginning, so far as 
its objects were personal. But there is no reason for supposing 
that he attached importance to it before that memorable afternoon 
in December, 1830, when he strolled from the Supreme Court in- 
to the Senate-chamber, and chanced to hear Colonel Hayne re- 
vihng New England, and repeating the doctrines of the South 
Cai'olina Exposition. 

Every one knows the story of this first triumph of the United 
States over its enemies. Daniel Webster, as Mr. Everett re- 
cords, appeared to be the only person in Washington who was 
entirely at his ease ; and he was so remarkably unconcerned, that 
Mr. Everett feared he was not aware of the expectations of the 
public, and the urgent necessity of his exerting all his powers. 
Another friend mentions, that on the day before the delivery of 
the principal speech the orator lay down as usual, after dinner, 
upon a sofa, and soon was heard laughing to himself. Being 
asked what he was laughing at, he said he had just thought of a 
way to turn Colonel Hayne's quotation about Banquo's ghost 
against himself, and he was going to get up and make a note of 
it. This he did, and then resumed his nap. 

Notwithstanding these appearances of indifference, he was fully 
roused to the importance of the occasion ; and, indeed, we have 
the impression that only on this occasion, in his whole life, were 
all his powers in full activity and his entire mass of being in full 
glow. But even then the artist was apparent in all that he did, 
5 o 



98 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

and particularly in the dress which he wore. At that time, in 
his forty-eighth year, his hair was still as black as an Indian's, and 
it lay in considerable masses about the spacious dome of his fore- 
head. His form had neither the slenderness of his youth nor the 
elephantine magnitude of his later years ; it was fully, but finely, 
developed, imposing and stately, yet not wanting in alertness and 
grace. No costume could have been better suited to it than his 
blue coat and glittering gilt buttons, his ample yellow waistcoat, 
his black trousers, and snowy cravat. It was in some degree, per- 
haps, owing to the elegance and daintiness of his dress that, while 
the New England men among his hearers were moved to tears, 
many Southern members, like Colonel Benton, regarded the 
speech merely as a Fourth-of-July oration delivered on the Gth 
of January. Benton assures us, however, that he soon discov- 
ered his error, for the Nullifiers were not to be put down by a 
speech, and soon revealed themselves in their true character, as 
" irreconcilable " foes of the Union. This was Daniel Web- 
ster's own word in speaking of that faction in 1830, — " irrecon- 
cilable." 

After this transcendent effort, — perhaps the greatest of its 
kind ever made by man, — Daniel Webster had nothing to gain 
in the esteem of the Northern States. He was indisputably our 
foremost man, and in Massachusetts there was no one who could 
be said to be second to him in the regard of the people : he was 
a whole species in himself. In the subsequent winter of debate 
with Calhoun upon the same subject, he added many details to 
his argument, developed it in many directions, and accumulated a 
great body of constitutional reasoning ; but so far as the people 
were concerned, the reply to Hayne sufficed. In all those 
debates we are struck with his colossal, his superfluous superiority 
to his opponents ; and we wonder how it could have been that 
such a man should have thought it worth while to refute such 
puerilities. It was, however, abundantly worth while. The 
assailed Constitution needed such a defender. It was necessary 
that the patriotic feeling of the American people, which was 
destined to a trial so severe, should have an unshakable basis of 
intelligent conviction. It was necessary that all men should be 



DANIEL WEBSTER. . 99 

made distinctly to see that the Constitution was not a "compact" 
to which the States "acceded," and from which they could 
secede, but the fundamental law, which the people had established 
and ordained, from which there could be no secession but by 
revolution. It was necessary that the country should be made to 
understand that Nullification and Secession were one and the 
same ; and that to admit the first, promising to stop short at the 
second, was as though a man " should take the plunge of Niag- 
ara and cry out that he would stop half-way down." Mr. Web- 
ster's pvincipal speech on this subject, delivered in 1832, has, and 
will ever have, with the people and the Courts of the United 
States, the authority of a judicial decision ; and it might very 
properly be added to popular editions of the Constitution as an 
appendix. Into the creation of the feeling and opinion which 
fousht out the late war for the Union a thousand and ten thou- 
sand causes entered ; every man who had ever performed a 
patriotic action, and every man who ever from his heart had 
spoken a patriotic word, contributed to its production ; but to no 
man, perhaps, were we more indebted for it than to the Daniel 
Webster of 1830 and 1832. 

We cannot so highly commend his votes in 1832 as his 
speeches. General Jackson's mode of dealing with nullification 
seems to us the model for every government to follow which ha- 
lo deal with discontented subjects : — 1. To take care that the 
laws are obeyed ; 2. To remove the real grounds of discontent. 
This was General Jackson's plan. This, also, was the aim of 
Mr. Clay's compromise. Mr. Webster objected to both, on the 
ground that nullification was rebellion, and that no legislation 
respecting the pretext for rebellion should be entertained until 
the rebeUion was quelled. Thus he came out of the battle, dear 
to the thinking people of the country, but estranged from the 
three political powers, — Henry Clay and his friends. General 
Jackson and his friends, Calhoun and his friends ; and though he 
soon lapsed again under the leadership of Mr. Clay, there was 
never again a cordial union between him and any interior circle 
of politicians who could have gratified his ambition. Deceived 
by the thunders of applause which greeted him wherever he 



100 DANIEL WEBSTEK. 

went, and the intense adulation of his own immediate circle, he 
thought that he too could be an independent power in politics. 
Two wild vagaries seemed to have haunted him ever after : first, 
that a man could merit the Presidency ; secondly, that a man 
could get the Presidency by meriting it. 

From 1832 to the end of his life it appears to us that Daniel 
Webster was undergoing a process of deterioration, moral and 
mental. His material part gained upon his spiritual. Naturally 
inclined to indolence, and having an enormous capacity for phys- 
ical enjoyment, a great hunter, fisherman, and farmer, a lover of 
good wine and good dinners, a most jovial companion, his phys- 
ical desires and tastes were constantly strengthened by being 
keenly gratified, while his mind was fed chiefly upon past ac- 
quisitions. There is nothing in his later eflforts which shows any 
intellectual advance, nothing from which we can infer that he 
had been browsing in forests before untrodden, or feeding in pas- 
tures new. He once said, at Marshfield, that, if he could live 
three lives in one, he would like to devote them all to study, — 
one to geology, one to astronomy, and one to classical literature. 
But it does not appear that he invigorated and refreshed the old 
age of his mind, by doing more than glance over the great works 
which treat of these subjects. A new language every ten years, 
or a new science vigorously pursued, seems necessary to preserve 
the freshness of the understanding, especially when the physical 
tastes are superabundantly noui'ished. He could praise Rufus 
Choate for reading a little Latin and Greek every day, — and 
this was better than nothing, — but he did not follow his exam- 
ple. There is an aged merchant in New York, who has kept his 
mind from growing old by devoting exactly twenty minutes every 
day to the reading of some abstruse book, as far removed from 
his necessary routine of thought as he could find. Goethe's ad- 
vice to every one to read every day a short poem, recognizes the 
danger we all incur in taking systematic care of the body and 
letting the soul take care of itself. During the last ten years of 
Daniel Webster's life, he spent many a thousand dollars upon his 
library, and almost ceased to be an intellectual being. 

His pecuniary habits demoralized him. It was wrong and 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 101 

mean in him to accept gifts of money from the people of Boston ; 
it was wrong in them to submit to his merciless exactions. Wliat 
need was there that their Senator should sometimes be a mendi- 
cant and sometimes a pauper ? If he chose to maintain baronial 
state without a baron's income ; if he chose to have two fancy 
farms of more than a thousand acres each ; if he chose to keep 
two hundred prize cattle and seven hundred choice sheep for his 
pleasure ; if he must have about his house lamas, deer, and all 
rare fowls ; if his flower-garden must be one acre in extent, and 
his books worth thirty thousand dollars ; if he found it pleasant 
to keep two or three yachts and a little fleet of smaller craft ; if 
he could not refrain from sending money in answer to begging 
letters, and pleased himself by giving away to his black man 
money enough to buy a very good house ; and if he could not 
avoid adding wings and rooms to his spacious mansion at Marsh- 
field, and must needs keep open house there and have a dozen 
guests at a time, — why should the solvent and careful business 
men of Boston have been taxed, or have taxed themselves, to 
pay any part of the expense ? 

Mr. Lanman, his secretary, gives us this curious and contra- 
dictory account of his pecuniary habits : — 

" He made money with ease, and spent it without reflection. He 
had accounts with various banks, and men of all parties were always 
glad to accommodate him with loans, if he wanted them. He kept no 
record of his deposits, unless it were on slips of paper hidden in his 
pockets ; these matters were generally left with his secretary. His 
notes were seldom or never regularly protested, and when they were, 
they caused him an immense deal of mental anxiety. When the 
writer has sometimes drawn a check for a couple of thousand dollars, 
he has not even looked at it, but packed it away in his pockets, like so 
much waste paper. During his long professional career, he earned 
money enough to make a dozen fortunes, but he spent it liberally, and 
gave it away to the poor by hundreds and thousands. Begging letters 
from women and unfortunate men were received by him almost daily, 
at certain periods ; and one instance is remembered where, on six suc- 
cessive days, he sent remittances of fifty and one hundred dollars to 
people with whom he was entirely unacquainted. He was indeed care- 
less, but strictly and religiously honest, in all his money matters. He 



102 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

knew not how to be otherwise. The last fee which he ever received 

for a single legal argument was $11,000 

" A sanctimonious lady once called upon Mr. Webster, in Washing- 
ton, with a long and pitiful story about her misfortunes and poverty, 
and asked him for a donation of money to defray her expenses to her 
home in a Western city. He listened with all the patience he could 
manage, expressed his surprise that she should have called upon him 
for money, simjDly because he was an officer of the government, and 
that, too, when she was a total stranger to him, reprimanded her in 
very plain language for her improper conduct, and handed her a note 
of fifty dollars. 

" He had called upon the cashier of the bank where he kept an ac- 
count, for the purpose of getting a draft discounted, when that gentle- 
man expressed some surprise, and casually inquired why he wanted so 
much money ? ' To spend ; to buy bread and meat,' replied ]\Ir. Web- 
ster, a little annoyed at this speech. 

" ' But,' returned the cashier, ' you already have upon deposit in the 
bank no less than three thousand dollars, and I was only wondering 
why you wanted so much money.' 

" This was indeed the truth, but Mr. Webster had forgotten it." 

Mr. Lanman's assertion that Mr. Webster, with all this reck- 
lessness, was religiously honest, must have excited a grim smile 
upon the countenances of such of his Boston readers as had had 
his name upon their books. No man can be honest long who is 
careless in his expenditures. 

It is evident from his letters, if we did not know it from other 
sources of information, that his carelessness with regard to the 
balancing of his books grew upon him as he advanced in life, 
and kept pace with the general deterioration of his character. In 
1824, before he had been degraded by the acceptance of pecuni- 
ary aid, and when he was still a solvent person, one of his nephews 
asked him for a loan. He replied : " If you think you can do 
anything useful with a thousand dollars, yon may have that sum 
in the spring, or sooner, if need be, on the following conditions : — 
I. You must give a note for it with reasonable security. 2. The 
interest must be payable annually, and must be paid at the day 
without fail. And so long as this continues to be done, the money 
not to be called for — the principal — under six months' notice. 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 103 

I am thus explicit with you, because you wish me to be so ; and 
because also, having a little money, and but a little, I am resolved 
on keeping it." This is sufficiently business-like. He had a lit- 
tle money then, — enough, as he intimates, for the economical 
maintenance of his family. During the land fever of 1835 and 
1836, he lost so seriously by speculations in Western land, that 
he was saved from bankruptcy only by the aid of that mystical 
but efficient body whom he styled his " friends " ; and from that 
time to the end of his life he was seldom at his ease. He earned 
immense occasional fees, — two of twenty-five thousand dollars 
each ; he received frequent gifts of money, as well as a regular 
stipend from an invested capital ; but he expended so profusely, 
that he was sometimes at a loss for a hundred dollars to pay his 
hay-makers ; and he died forty thousand dollars in debt. 

The adulation of which he was the victim at almost every hour 
of his existence injured and deceived him. He was continually 
informed that he was the greatest of living men, — the " godlike 
Daniel " ; and when he escaped even into the interior of his 
home, he found there persons who sincerely believed that making 
such speeches as his was the greatest of all possible human 
achievements. All men whose talents are of the kind which 
enable their possessor to give intense pleasure to great multitudes 
are liable to this misfortune ; and especially in a new and busy 
country, little removed from the colonial state, where intellectual 
eminence is rare, and the number of persons who can enjoy it is 
exceedingly great. "We are growing out of this provincial pro- 
pensity to abandon ourselves to admiration of the pleasure-giving 
talents. The time is at hand, we trust, when we shall not be 
struck with wonder because a man can make a vigorous speech, 
or write a good novel, or play Hamlet decently, and when we 
shall be able to enjoy the talent without adoring the man. The 
talent is one thing, and the man another; the talent may be 
immense, and the man little ; the speech powerful and wise, the 
speaker weak and foolish. Daniel Webster came at last to loathe 
this ceaseless incense, but it was when his heart was set upon ho- 
mage of another kind, which he was destined never to enjoy. 

Another powerful cause of his deterioration was the strange, 



104 DANIEL V/EBSTER. 

strong, always increasing desii'e he htid to be President. Any 
intelligent politician, outside of the circle of his own " friends," 
could have told him, and proved to him, that he had little more 
chance of being elected President than the most insignificant 
man in the Whig party. And the marvel is, that he himself 
should not have known it, — he who knew whj^, precisely why, 
every candidate had been nominated, from Madison to General 
Taylor. In the teeth of all the facts, he still cherished the amaz- 
ing delusion that the Presidency of the United States, like the 
Premiership of England, is the natural and just reward of long 
and able public service. The Presidency, on the contrary, is not 
merely an accident, but it is an accident of the last moment. It 
is a game too difficult for mortal faculties to play, because some 
of the conditions of success are as uncertain as the winds, and as 
ungovernable. If dexterous playing could have availed, Douglas 
would have carried off the stakes, for he had an audacious and a 
mathematical mind ; while the winning man in 1856 was a heavy 
player, devoid of skill, whose decisive advantage was that he had 
been out of the game for four years. Mr. Seward, too, was within 
an ace of winning, when an old quarrel between two New York 
editors swept his cards from the table. 

No : the President of the United States is not prime minister, 
but chief magistrate, and he is subject to that law of nature which 
places at the head of regular governments more or less respecta- 
ble Nobodies. In Europe this law of nature works through the 
hereditary principle, and in America through universal suffrage. 
In all probability, we shall usually elect a person of the non-com- 
mittal species, — one who will have lived fifty or sixty years in 
the world without having formed an offensive conviction or uttered 
a striking word, — one who will have conducted his life as those 
popular periodicals are conducted, in which there are " no allusions 
to politics or religion." And may not this be part of the exquis- 
ite economy of nature, which ever strives to get into each place 
the smallest man that can fill it? How miserably out of place 
would be a man of active, originating, disinterested spirit, at the 
head of a strictly limited, constitutional government, such as ours 
is in time of peace, in which the best President is he who does 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 105 

the least ? Imagine a live man thrust out over the bows of a 
ship, and compelled to stand as figure-head, lashed by the waves 
and winds during a four years' voyage, and expected to be pleased 
with his situation because he is gilt ! 

Daniel Webster so passionately desired the place, that he could 
never see how far he was from the possibility of getting it. He 
was not such timber as either Southern fire-eaters or Northern 
wu-e-pullers had any use for ; and a melancholy sight it was, this 
man, once so stately, paying court to every passing Southerner, 
and personally begging delegates to vote for him. He was not 
made for that. An elephant does sometimes stand upon his head 
and play a barrel-organ, but every one who sees the sorry sight 
sees also that it was not the design of Nature that elephants 
should do such things. 

A Marshfield elm may be for half a century in decay without 
exhibiting much outward change ; and when, in some tempestu- 
ous night, half its bulk is torn away, the neighborhood notes with 
surprise that what seemed solid wood is dry and crumbling pith. 
During the last fifteen years of Daniel Webster's life, his wonder- 
fully imposing form and his immense reputation concealed from 
the public the decay of his powers and the degeneration of his 
morals. At least, few said what perhaps many felt, that " he was 
not the man he had been." People went away from one of his 
ponderous and empty speeches disappointed, but not ill pleased 
to boast that they too had " heard Daniel Webster speak," and 
feeling very sure that he could be eloquent, though he had not 
been. We heard one of the last of his out-of-door speeches. It 
was near Philadelphia, in 1844, when he was " stumping the 
State" for Henry CMay, and when our youthful feelings were 
warmly with the object of his speech. What a disappointment ! 
How poor and pompous and pointless it seemed ! Nor could we 
resist the impression that he was playing a part, nor help saying 
to ourselves, as we turned to leave the scene, " This man is not 
sincere in this : he is a humbug." And when, some years later, 
we saw him present himself before a large audience in a state not 
far removed from intoxication, and mumble incoherence for ten 
minutes, and when, in the course of the evening, we saw him 

5* 



106 DANIEL WEBSTEE. 

make a great show of approval whenever the clergy were com- 
plimented, the impression was renewed that the man had ex- 
pended his sincerity, and that nothing was real to him any more 
except wine and office. And even then such were the might and 
majesty of his presence, that he seemed to fill and satisfy the 
people by merely sitting there in an arm-chair, like Jupiter, in a 
spacious yellow waistcoat with two bottles of Madeira under it. 

All this gradual, unseen deterioration of mind and character 
was revealed to the country on the 7th of March, 1850. What 
a downfall was there ! That shameful speech reads worse in 
1867 than it did in 1850, and still exerts perverting power over 
timid and unformed minds. It was the very time for him to have 
broken finally with the " irreconcilable " faction, who, after hav- 
ing made President Tyler sniih Daniel Webster from his dearly 
loved office of Secretary of State, had consummated the scheme 
which gave us Texas at the cost of war with Mexico, and Cali- 
fornia as one of the incidents of peace. California was not down 
in their programme ; and now, while claiming the right to make 
four slave States out of Texas, they refused to admit California 
to fi-eedom. Then was it that Daniel Webster of Massachusetts 
rose in the Senate of the United States and said in substance 
this : These fine Southern brethren of ours have now stolen all 
the land there is to steal. Let us, therefore, put no obstacle in 
the way of their peaceable enjoyment of the plunder. 

And the spirit of the speech was worse even than its doctrine. 
He went down upon the knees of his soul, and paid base homage 
to his own and his country's irreconcilable foes. Who knew bet- 
ter than Daniel Webster that John C. Calhoun and his followers 
had first created and then systematically fomented the hostile 
feeling which then existed between the North and the South ? 
How those men must have chuckled among themselves when 
they witnessed the willing degradation of the man who should 
have arraigned them before the country as the conscious enemies 
of its peace ! How was it that no one laughed outright at such 
billing and cooing as this ? 

Mr. Webstei: — " An honorable member [Calhoun], whose health 
does not allow him to be here to-day — " 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 107 

A Senator. — " He is here." 

3Ir. Webster. — "I am very happy to hear that he is ; may he long 
be here, and in the enjoyment of health to serve his country ! " 

And this : — 

Mi: Webster. — " The honorable member did not disguise his conduct 
or his motives." 

Mr. Calhoun. — " Never, never." 

Mr. Webster. — " What he means he is very apt to say." 

Mr. Calhoun. — " Always, always." 

Mr. Webster. — "And I honor him for it." 

And this : — 

Mr. Webster. — "I see an honorable member of this body [Mason 
of Virginia] paying me the honor of listening to my remarks ; he 
brings to my mind, Sir, freshly and vividly, what I learned of his great 
ancestor, so much distinguished in his day and generation, so worthy to 
be succeeded by so worthy a grandson." 

And this : — 

Mr. Webster. — " An honorable member from Louisiana addressed 
us the other day on this subject. I suppose there is not a more amiable 
and worthy gentleman in this chamber, nor a gentleman who would be 
more slow to give offence to anybody, and he did not mean in his re- 
marks to give offence. But what did he say ? Why, Sir, he took pains 
to run a contrast between the slaves of the South and the laboring peo- 
ple of the Noi'th, giving the preference in all points of condition and 
comfort and happiness to the slaves." 

In the course of this speech there is one most palpable contra- 
diction. In the beginning of it, the orator mentioned the change 
of feeling and opinion that had occurred as to the institution of 
slavery, — " the North growing much more vparm and strong 
against slavery, and the South growing much more warm and 
strong in its support." "Once," he said, "the most eminent men, 
and nearly all the conspicuous politicians of the South, held the 
same sentiments, — that slavery was an evil, a blight, a scourge, 
and a curse " ; but now it is " a cherished institution in that 
quarter ; no evil, no scourge, but a great religious, social, and 
moral blessing." He then asked how this change of opinion had 
been brought about, and thus answered the question : " I suppose. 



108 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

sir, this is owing to the rapid growth and sudden extension of the 
COTTON plantations in the South." And to make the statement 
more emphatic, he caused the word cotton to be printed in capi- 
tals in the authorized edition of his works. But later in the 
speech, when he came to add his ponderous condemnation to the 
odium in which the handful of Abolitionists were held, — the 
elite of the nation from Franklin's day to this, — then he attrib- 
uted this remarkable change to their zealous efforts to awaken 
the nobler conscience of the country. After giving his own ver- 
sion of their proceedings, he said : " Well, what was the result ? 
The bonds of the slaves were bound more firmly than before, 
their rivets were more strongly fastened. Public opinion, which 
in Virginia had begun to be exhibited against slavery, and was 
opening out for the discussion of the question, drew back and shut 
itself up in its castle." 

But all would not do. He bent the knee in vain. Vain too 
were his personal efforts, his Southern tour, his Astor House woo- 
ings, — the politicians would have none of him ; and he had the cut- 
tino; mortification of seeing himself set aside for a Winfield Scott. 

Let us not, however, forget that on this occasion, though Dan- 
iel "Webster appeared for the first time in his life as a leader, he 
was in reality still only a follo\yer, — a follower, not of the public 
opinion of the North, but of the wishes of its capitalists. And 
probably many thousands of well-meaning men, not versed in the 
mysteries of politics, were secretly pleased to find themselves pi'o- 
vided with an excuse for yielding once more to a faction, who 
had over us the immense advantage of having made up their 
minds to carry their point or fight. If his was the shame of this 
speech, ours was the guilt. He faithfully represented the portion 
of his constituents whose wine he drank, who helped him out 
with his notes, and who kept his atmosphere hazy with incense ; 
and he faithfully represented, also, that larger number who wait 
till the wolf is at tlieir door before arming against him, instead of 
meeting him afar off in the outskirts of the wood. Let us own it : 
the North yearned for peace in 1850, — peace at almost any price. 

One of the most intimate of Mr. Webster's friends said, in a 
public address : " It is true that he desired the highest political 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 109 

position in the country, — that he thought he had fairly earned a 
claim to that position. And I solemnly believe that because that 
claim was denied his days were shortened." No enemy of the 
great orator ever uttered anything so severe against him as this, 
and we are inclined to think it an error. It was probably the 
strength of his desire for the Presidency that shortened his life, 
not the mere disappointment. When President Fillmore offered 
him the post of Secretary of State, in 1850, it appears to have 
been his preference, much as he loved office, to decline it. He 
longed for his beautiful Marshfield, on the shore of the ocean, his 
herds of noble cattle, his broad, productive fields, his yachts, his 
fishing, his rambles in the forests planted by his own hand, his 
homely chats with neighbors and beloved dependents. " Oh ! " 
said he, " if I could have my own will, never, never would I leave 
Marslifield again ! " But his " friends," interested and disinter- 
ested, told him it was a shorter step from the office of Secretary 
of State to that of President than from the Senate-chamber. He 
yielded, as he always did, and spent a long, hot summer in Wash- 
ington, to the sore detriment of his health. And again, in 1852, 
after he had failed to receive the nomination for the Presidency, 
he was offered the place of Minister to England. His " friends " 
again advised against his acceptance. His letter to the Pi-esident, 
declining the offer, presents him in a sorry light indeed. " I have 
made up my mind to think no more about the English mission. 
My principal reason is, that I think it would be regarded as a 

descent I have been accustomed to give instructions to 

ministers abroad, and not to receive them." Accustomed ! Yes : 
for two years ! It is probable enough that his acceptance of of- 
fice, and his adherence to it, hastened his death. Four months 
after the words were written which we have just quoted, he was 
no more. 

His last days were such as his best friends could have wished 
them to be, — calm, dignified, affectionate, worthy of his lineage. 
His burial, too, was singularly becoming, impressive, and touch- 
ing. We have been exceedingly struck with the account of it 
given by Mr. George S. Hillard, in his truly elegant and elo- 
quent eulogy upon Mr. Webster, delivered in Faneuil Hall. In 



110 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

his last will, executed a few days before his death, Mr. "Webster 
requested that he might be buried " without the least show or os- 
tentation, but in a manner respectful to my neighbors, whose 
kindness has contributed so much to the happiness of me and 
mine." His wishes were obeyed ; and he was buried more as 
the son of plain, brave Captain Ebenezer Webster, than as Secre- 
tary of State. "No coffin," said Mr. Hillard, "concealed that 
majestic frame. In the open air, clad as when alive, he lay ex- 
tended in seeming sleep, with no touch of disfeature upon his 
brow, — as noble an image of reposing strength as ever was seen 
upon earth. Around him was the landscape that he had loved, 
and above him was nothing but the dome of the coverhig heav- 
ens. The sunshine fell upon the dead man's face, and the breeze 
blew over it. A lover of Nature, he seemed to be gathered into 
her maternal arms, and to lie like a child upon a mother's lap. 
"We felt, as we looked upon him, that death had never stricken 
down, at one blow, a greater sum of life. And whose heart did 
not swell when, from the honored and distinguished men there 
gathered together, six plain Marshfield farmers were called forth 
to carry the head of their neighbor to the grave. Slowly and 
sadly the vast multitude followed, in mourning silence, and he 
was laid down to rest among dear and kindred dust." 

In surveying the life and works of this eminent and gifted 
man, we are continually struck with the evidences of his magni- 
tude. He was, as we have said, a very large person. His braiu 
was within a little of being one third larger than the average, 
and it was one of the largest three on record. His bodily frame, 
in all its parts, was on a majestic scale, and his presence was im- 
mense. He liked large things, — mountains, elms, great oaks, 
■ miglity bulls and oxen, wide fields, the ocean, the Union, and all 
thin2;s of magnitude. He liked sreat Rome far better than refined 
Greece, and revelled in the immense things of literature, such as 
Paradise Lost, and the Book of Job, Burke, Dr. Johnson, and the 
Sixth Book of the ^neid. Homer he never cared much for, — 
nor, indeed, anything Greek. He hated, he loathed, the act of 
writing. Billiards, ten-pins, chess, draughts, whist, he never 
relished, though fond to excess of out-door pleasures, like hunt- 



DANIEL WEBSTER. Ill 

ing, fishing, yachting. He hked to be alone with great Nature, 
— alone in the giant woods or on the shores of the resounding 
sea, — alone all day with his gun, his dog, and his thoughts, — 
alone in the morning, before any one was astir but himself, look- 
ing out upon the sea and the glorious sunrise. What a delicious 
picture of this large, healthy Son of Earth Mr. Lanraan gives us, 
where he describes him coming into his bedroom, at sunrise, and 
startling him out of a deep sleep by shouting, "Awake, sluggard ! 
and look upon this glorious scene, for the sky and the ocean are 
enveloped in flames ! " He was akin to all large, slow things in 
nature. A herd of fine cattle gave him a keen, an inexhaustible 
enjoyment ; but he never " tasted " a horse : he had no horse 
enthusiasm. In England he chiefly enjoyed these five things, 
the Tower of London, "Westminster Abbey, Smithfield Cattle 
Market, English farming, and Sir Robert Peel. Sir Robert Peel 
he tliought was " head and shoulders above any other man " he 
had ever met. He greatly excelled, too, in describing immense 
things. In speaking of the Pyramids, once, he asked, " Who 
can inform us by what now unknown machines mass was thus 
aggregated to mass, and quarry piled on quarry, till solid granite 
seemed to cover the earth and reach the skies." His peculiar 
love of the Union of these States was partly due, perhaps, to this 
habit of his mind of dwelling with complacency on vastness. He 
felt that he wanted and required a continent to live in : his mind 
would have gasped for breath in New Hampshire. 

But this enormous creature was not an exception to the law 
which renders giants harmless by seaming them with weakness, 
but for which the giants would possess the earth. If he had 
been completed throughout on the plan on which he was 
sketched, if he had been as able to originate as he was powerful 
to state, if he had possessed will proportioned to his strength, 
moral power equal to his moral feeling, intellect on a par with 
bis genius, and principle worthy of his intellect, he would have 
subjugated mankind, and raised his country to a point from which 
it would have dropped when the tyrannizing influence was 
withdrawn. Every sphere of life has its peculiar temptations, 
which there is only one thing that can enable a man to resisf, — 



112 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

a relisiious, i. e. a disinterested devotion to its duties. Daniel 
Webster was one of those who fell before the seductions of his 
place. He was not one of those who find in the happiness and 
prosperity of their country, and in the esteem of their fellow- 
citizens, their own sufficient and abundant reward for serving her. 
He pined for something lower, smaller, — something personal 
and vulgar. He had no religion, — not the least tincture of it ; 
and he seemed at last, in his dealings with individuals, to have no 
conscience. What he called his religion had no effect whatever 
upon the conduct of his life ; it made him go to church, talk 
piously, puff the clergy, and " patronize Providence," — no more. 
He would accept retaining fees, and never look into the bundles 
of papers which accompanied them, in which were enclosed the 
hopes and the fortune of anxious households. He would receive 
gifts of money, and toss into his waste-paper basket the list of 
the givers, without having glanced at its contents ; thus defraud- 
ing them of the only recompense in his power to grant, and the 
only one they wished. It shocked him if his secretary came to 
the dinner-table in a frock-coat, and he would himself appear 
drunk before three thousand people. And yet, such was the 
power of his genius, such was the charm of his manner, such the 
affectionateness of his nature, such the robust heartiness of his 
enjoyment of life, that honorable men who knew his faults best 
loved him to the last, — not in spite of them, but partly in con- 
sequence of them. What in another man they would have pro- 
nounced atrocious, appeared in him a kind of graceful rollicking 
helplessness to resist. 

Such, as it seems to our very imperfect judgment, was Daniel 
Webster, one of the largest and one of the weakest of men, of 
admirable genius and deplorable character ; who began life well 
and served his country well and often, but held not out faithful 
to the end. American statesmen are called to a higher vocation 
than those of other countries, and there is nothing in the politics 
of America which can reward a man of eminent ability for pub- 
lic service. If such a person feels that his country's happiness 
and greatness will not be a satisfying recompense for anything he 
can do for her, let him, as he values his peace and soul's health, 
cling to the safe obscurity of private life. 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 



THERE were two ways of getting to South Carolina in Colonial 
times. The first immigrants, many of whom were men of 
capital, landed a,t Charleston, and, settling in the fertile low coun- 
try along the coast, became prosperous planters of rice, indigo, and 
corn, before a single white inhabitant had found his way to the 
more salubrious upper country in the western part of the Prov- 
ince. The settlers of the upper country were plain, poorer peo- 
ple, who landed at Philadelphia or Baltimore, and travelled 
southward along the base of the AUeglianies to the inviting table- 
lands of the Carolinas. In the lower country, the estates were 
large, the slaves numerous, the white inhabitants few, idle, and 
profuse. The upper country was peopled by a sturdier race, 
who possessed farms of moderate extent, hewn out of the wilder- 
ness by their own strong arras, and tilled by themselves with the 
aid of few slaves. Between the upper and the lower country 
there was a waste region of sandy hills and rocky acclivities, un- 
inhabited, almost uninhabitable, which rendered the two sections 
of one Province separate communities scarcely known to one 
another. Down almost to the beginning of the Revolutionary 
War, the farmers of the upper country were not represented in 
the Legislature of South Carolina, though they were then as nu- 
merous as the planters of the lower country. Between the peo- 
ple of the two sections there was little unity of feeling. The 
lordly planters of the lower country regarded their Western fel- 
low-citizens as provincial or plebeian ; the farmers of the upper 
country had some contempt for the planters as effeminate, aristo- 
cratic, and Tory. The Revolution abased the pride, lessened the 
wealth, and improved the politics of the planters ; a revised Con- 



s 



116 JOIIN C. CALHOUN. 

» 

stitution, in 1790, gave preponderance to the up-country farmers 
in, the popular branch of the Legislature ; and thenceforth South 
Carolina was a sufficiently homogeneous commonwealth. 

Looking merely to the public career of Calhoun, the special 
pleader of the Southern aristocracy, we should expect to find him 
born and reared among the planters of the low country. The 
Calhouns, on the contrary, were up-country people, — farmers, 
"Whigs, Presbyterians, men of moderate means, who wielded the 
axe and held the plough with their own hands, until enabled to 
buy a few " new negroes," cheap and savage ; called new, be- 
cause fresh from Africa. A family party of them (parents, four 
sons, and a daughter) emigrated from the North of Ireland early 
in the last century, and settled first in Pennsylvania ; then re- 
moved to Western Virginia ; whence the defeat of Braddock, in 
1755, drove them southward, and they found a permanent abode 
in the extreme west of South Carolina, then an unbroken wilder- 
ness. Of those four sons, Patrick Calhoun, the father of the Nul- 
lifier, was the youngest. He was six years old when the family 
left L'eland ; twenty-nine, when they planted the " Calhoun Set- 
tlement " in Abbeville District, South Carolina. 

Patrick Calhoun was a strong-headed, wrong-headed, very 
brave, honest, ignorant man. His whole life, almost, was a bat- 
tle. When the Calhouns had been but five years in their forest 
home, the Cherokees attacked the settlement, destroyed it ut- 
terly, killed one half the men, and drove the rest to the lower 
country ; whence they dared not return till the peace of 1763. 
Patrick Calhoun was elected to command the mounted rangers 
raised to protect the frontiers, a duty heroically performed by 
him. After the peace, the settlement enjoyed several years of 
tranquillity, during which Patrick Calhoun was married to Martha 
Caldwell, a native of Virginia, but the daughter of an Irish Pres- 
byterian emigrant. During this peaceful interval, all the family 
prospered with the settlement which bore its name ; and Patrick, 
who in his childhood had only learned to read and write, availed 
himself of such leisure as he had to increase his knowledge. Be- 
sides reading the books within his reach, which were few, he 
learned to survey land, and practised that vocation to advantage. 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 117 

He was especially fond of reading history to gather new proofs of 
the soundness of his political opinions, which were Whig to the 
uttermost. The war of the Revolution broke in upon the settle- 
ment, at length, and made deadly havoc there ; for it was warred 
upon by three foes at once, — the British, the Tories, and the 
Cherokees. The Tories murdered in cold blood a brother of 
Patrick Calhoun's wife. Another of her brothers fell at Cow- 
pens under thirty sabre-wounds. Another was taken prisoner, 
and remained for nine months in close confinement at one of the 
British Andersonvilles of that day. Patrick Calhoun, in many a 
desperate encounter with the Indians, displayed singular coolness, 
courage, adroitness, and tenacity. On one memorable occasion, 
thirteen of his neighbors and himself maintained a forest fight for 
sevei'al hours with a force of Cherokees ten times their number. 
When seven of the white men had fallen, the rest made their es- 
cape. Returning three days after to bury their dead, they found 
upon the field the bodies of twenty-three Indian warriors. At 
another time, as his son used to relate, he had a very long com- 
bat with a chief noted for the certainty of his aim, — the Indian 
behind a tree, the white man behind a fallen log. Four times 
the wily Calhoun drew the Indian's fire by elevating his hat upon 
his ramrod. The chief, at last, could not refrain from looking to 
see the effect of his shot ; when one of his shoulders was slightly 
exposed. On the instant, the white man's rifle sent a ball 
through it ; the chief fled into the forest, and Patrick Calhoun 
bore off as a trophy of the fight his own hat pierced with four 
bullets. 

This Patrick Calhoun illustrates well the North-of-Ireland 
character ; one peculiarity of which is the possession of will dis- 
proportioned to intellect. Hence a man of this race frequently 
appears to striking advantage in scenes which demand chiefly an 
exercise of will ; while in other spheres, which make larger de- 
mands upon the understanding, the same man may be simply mis- 
chievous. We see this in the case of Andrew Jackson, who at 
New Orleans was glorious ; at Washington almost wholly perni- 
cious ; and in the case of Andrew Johnson, who was eminently 
useful to his country in 1861, but obstructive and perilous to it in 



118 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

1866. For these Scotch-Irishmen, though they are usually very 
honest nien, and often right in their opinions, are an uniustructa- 
ble race, who stick to a prejudice as tenaciously as to a principle, 
and really suppose they are battling for right and truth, when 
they are only Avreaking a private vengeance or aiming at a per- 
sonal advantage. Patrick Calhoun was the most radical of Dem- 
ocrats ; one of your despisers of conventionality ; an enemy of 
lawyers, thinking the common sense of mankind competent to 
decide what is right without their aid ; a particular opponent of 
the arrogant pretensions of the low-country aristocrats. When 
the up-country peojile began to claim a voice in the government, 
long since due to their numbers, the planters, of course, opposed 
their demand. To establish their right to vote, Patrick Calhoun 
and a party of his neighbors, armed with rifles, marched across 
the State to within twenty-three miles of Charleston, and there 
voted in defiance of the plantation loi'ds. Events like this led to 
the admission of members from the up-country ; and Patrick Cal- 
houn was the first to represent that section in the Legislature. 
It was entirely characteristic of him to vote against the adoption 
of the Federal Constitution, on the ground that it authorized other 
people to tax Carolinians ; which he said was taxation Avithout 
representation. That was just like a narrow, cranky, opiniona- 
tive, unmanageable Calhoun. 

Devoid of imagination and of humor, a hard-headed, eager 
politician, he brought up his boy upon politics. This was sorry 
nourishment for a child's mind, but he had little else to give him. 
Gambling, hunting, whiskey, and politics were all there was to 
relieve the monotony of life in a Southern back settlement ; and 
the best men naturally threw themselves upon politics. Calhoun 
told Miss Martineau that he could remember standing between 
his fathex''s knees, when he was only five years old, and listening 
to political conversation. He told Duff Green that he had a dis- 
tinct recollection of hearing his father say, when he was only 
nine, that that government is best which allows to each individual 
the largest liberty compatible with order and tranquillity, and that 
improvements in political science consist in throwing off needless 
restraints. It was a strange child that could remember such a 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 119 

remark. As Patrick Calhoun died in 1795, when his son was 
thirteen years old, the boy must have been very young when he 
heard it, even if he were mistaken as to the time. Whether 
Patrick Calhoun ever touched upon the subject of slavery in his 
conversations with his children, is not reported. "We only know 
that, late in the career of Mr, Calhoun, he used to be taunted by 
his opponents in South Carolina with having once held that 
slavery was good and justifiable only so far as it was preparatory 
to freedom. He was accused of having committed the crime of 
saying, in a public speech, that slavery was like the " scaffolding " 
of an edifice, which, after having served its temporary purpose, 
would be taken down, of course. We presume he said this ; be- 
cause everything in his later speeches is flatly contradicted in 
those of his earlier public life. Patrick Calhoun was a man to 
give a reason for everything. He was an habitual tbeorizer and 
generalizer, without possessing the knowledge requisite for safe 
generalization. It is very probable that this apology for slavery 
was part of his son's slender inheritance. 

John Caldwell Calhoun — born in 1782, the youngest but one 
in a fjimily of five children — was eighteen years old before he 
had a thought of being anything but a farmer. His father had 
been dead five years. His only sister was married to that famous 
Mr. Waddell, clergyman and schoolmaster, whose academy in 
North Carolina was for so many years a great light in a dark place. 
One of his brothers was a clerk in a mercantile house at Cliarles- 
ton ; another was settled on a farm near by ; another was still a 
boy. His mother lived upon the paternal farm ; and with her 
lived her son John, who ploughed, hunted, fished, and rode, in the 
manner of the farmers' sons in that country. At eighteen he 
could read, write, and cipher ; he had read Rollin, Robertson, 
Voltaire's Charles XII., Brown's Essays, Captain Cook, and parts 
of Locke. This, according to his own account, was the sum of 
his knowledge, except that he had fully imbibed his father's 
decided republican opinions. He shared to some degree his fa- 
ther's prejudice, and the general prejudice of the upper country, 
against lawyers ; although a cousin, John Ewing Calhoun, had 
risen high in that profession, had long served in the Legislature 



120 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

of South Carolina, and was about to be elected United States 
Senator on the Jeffersonian side. As late as May 1800, when he 
was past eighteen, preference and necessity appeared to fix him 
in the vocation of farmer. The family had never been rich. 
Indeed, the great Nullifier himself was a comparatively poor 
man all his life, the number of his slaves never much exceeding 
thirty ; which is equivalent to a working force of fifteen hands or 
less. 

In May, 1800, Calhoun's elder brother came home from 
Charleston to spend the summer, bringing with him his city no- 
tions. He awoke the dormant ambition of the youth, urged him 
to go to school and become a professional man. But how could 
he leave his mother alone on the farm ? and how could the money 
be raised to pay for a seven years' education ? His mother and 
his brother conferred upon these points, and satisfied him upon 
both ; and in June, 1800, he made his way to the academy of his 
brother-in-law, Waddell, which was then in Columbia County, 
Georgia, fifty miles from the home of the Calhouns. In two 
years and a quarter from the day he first opened a Latin gram- 
mar, he entered the Junior Class of Yale College. This was 
quick work. Teachers, however, are aware that late beginners, 
who have spent their boyhood in growing, often stride past stu- 
dents who have passed theirs in stunting the growth of mind and 
body at school. Calhoun, late in life, often spoke of the immense 
advantage which Southern boys had over Northern in not going 
so early to school, and being so much on horseback and out of 
doors. He said one day, about the year 1845: "At the North 
you overvalue intellect; at the South we rely upon character; 
and if ever there should be a collision that shall test the strength 
of the two sections, you will find that character is stronger than 
intellect, and will carry the day." The prophecy has been ful- 
filled. 

Timothy Dwight, Calvinist and Federalist, was President of 
Yale College during Calhoun's residence there, and Thomas Jef- 
ferson, Democrat and freethinker, was President of the United 
States. Yale was a stronghold of Federalism. A brother of the 
President of the College, in his Fourth-of-July oration delivered 



i 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 121 

at New Haven four months after the inauguration of Jefferson 
and Burr, announced to the students and citizens, that " the great 
object " of those gentlemen and their adherents was " to destroy 
every trace of civilization in the world, and to force mankind 
back into a savage state." He also used the following language : 
" We have now reached the consummation of democratic blessed- 
ness. "W"e have a country governed by blockheads and knaves , 
the ties of marriage, with all its felicities, are severed and de- 
stroyed ; our wives and daughters are thrown into the stews ; 
our children are cast into the world from the breast forgotten ; 
filial piety is extinguished ; and our surnames, the only mark of 
distinction among families, are abolished. Can the imagination 
paint anything more dreadful this side hell?" These remark- 
able statements, so far from surprising the virtuous people of 
Ne\y Haven, were accepted by them, it appears, as facts, and 
published with general approval. From what we know of Pres- 
ident Dwight, we may conclude that he would regard his brother's 
oration as a pardonable flight of hyperbole, based on truth. He 
was a Federalist of the deepest dye. 

Transferred to a scene where such opinions prevailed, it cost 
the young republican no great exertion either of his intellect or 
bis firmness or his family pride to hold his ground. Of all 
known men, he had the most complete confidence in the infalli- 
bility of his own mind. He used to relate, that in the Senior 
year, when he was one of very few in a class of seventy who 
maintained I'epublican opinions, President Dwight asked him, 
" What is the legitimate source of power ? " " The people," 
answered the student. Dr. Dwight combated this opinion ; Cal- 
houn replied ; and the whole hour of recitation was consumed in 
the debate. Dr. Dwight was so much struck with the ability 
displayed by the student, that he remarked to a friend that Cal- 
houn had talent enough to be President of the United States, and 
that we should see him President in due time. In those in- 
nocent days, an observation of that nature was made of every 
young fellow who showed a little spirit and a turn for debate. 
Fathers did not then say to their promising ofi'spring, Beware, my 
son, of self-seeking and shallow speaking, lest you should be con- 
6 



122 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

signed to the White House, and be devoured by office-seekers. 
People then regarded the Presidency as a kind of reward of 
merit, the first step toward which was to get " up head " in the 
spelling-class. There is reason to believe that young Calhoun 
took the prediction of the Doctor very seriously. He took every- 
thing seriously. He never made a joke in his life, and was to- 
tally destitute of the sense of humor. It is doubtful if he was 
ever capable of unbending so far as to play a game of football. 

The ardent political discussions then in vogue had one effect 
which the late Mr. Buckle would have pronounced most salutary ; 
they prevented Dr. Dwight's severe theology from taking hold of 
the minds of many students. Calhoun wholly escaped it. In 
his speeches we find, of course, the stock allusions of a religious 
nature with which all politicians essay to flatter their constituents ; 
but he was never interested in matters theological. A century 
earlier, he might have been the Jonathan Edwards of the South, 
if there had been a South then. His was just the mind to have 
revelled in theological subtilties, and to have calmly, closely, un- 
relentingly argued nearly the whole human race into endless and 
hopeless perdition. His was just the nature to have contemplated 
his argument with complacency, and its consequences without 
emotion. 

Graduating with credit in 1804, he repaired to the famous 
Law School at Litchfield in Connecticut, where he remained a 
year and a half, and won general esteem. Tradition reports him 
a dilisfent student and an admirable debater there. As to his 
moral conduct, that was always irreproachable. That is to say, 
he was at every period of his life continent, temperate, orderly, 
and out of debt. In 1806, being then twenty -four years of age, 
he returned to South Carolina, and, after studying a short time 
in a law office at Charleston, he went at last to his native Abbe- 
ville to complete his preparation for the bar. He was still a law 
student at that place when the event occurred which called him 
into public life. 

June 22d, 1807, at noon, the United States frigate Chesapeake, 
thirty-eight guns, left her anchorage at Hampton Roads, and put 
to sea, bound for the Mediterranean. The United States being 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 123 

at peace with all the world, the Chesapeake was very far from 
being in proper man-of-war trim. Her decks were littered with 
furniture, baggage, stores, cables, and animals. The guns were 
loaded, but rammers, matches, wadding, cannon-balls, were all 
out of place, and not immediately accessible. The crew were 
merchant sailors and landsmen, all undrilled in the duties pecu- 
liar to an armed ship. There had been lying for some time at 
the same anchorage the British frigate Leopard, fifty guns ; and 
this ship also put to sea at noon of the same day. The Leopard 
being in perfect order, and manned by a veteran crew, took the 
lead of the Chesapeake, and kept it until three in the afternoon, 
when she was a mile in advance. Then she wore round, came 
within speaking distance, lowered a boat, and sent a lieutenant 
on board the American ship. This officer bore a despatch from 
the admiral of the station, ordering any captain who should fall 
in with the Chesapeake to search her for deserters. The Amer- 
ican commander replied that he knew of no deserters on board 
his ship, and could not permit a search to be made, his ordei's not 
authorizing the same. The lieutenant returned. As soon as he 
had got on board, and his boat was stowed away, the Leopard 
fired a full broadside into the American frigate. The American 
commodore, being totally unprepared for such an event, could not 
return the fire ; and therefore, when his ship had received twenty - 
one shot in her hull, Avhen her rigging was much cut up, when 
three of her crew were killed and eighteen wounded, the commo- 
dore himself among the latter, he had no choice but to lower his 
flag. Then the search was made, and four men, claimed as 
deserters, were taken ; after which the Leopard continued her 
course, and the crippled Chesapeake returned to Hampton Roads. 
The American commander was sentenced by a court-martial to 
five years' suspension for going to sea in such a condition. The 
English government recalled the admiral who ordered, and de- 
prived of his ship the captain who committed, this unparalleled 
outrage, but made no other reparation. 

No words of ours could convey any adequate idea of the rage 
which this event excited in the people of the United States. For 
a time, the Federalists themselves were ready for war. There 



124 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

were meetings everywhere to denounce it, and especially in the 
Southern States, always more disposed than the Northern to be- 
gin the shedding of blood, and already the main reliance of the 
Republican party. Remote and rustic Abbeville, a very Repub- 
lican district, was not silent on this occasion ; and who so proper 
to draw and support the denunciatory resolutions as young Cal- 
houn, the son of valiant Patrick, fresh from college, though now 
in his twenty-sixth year? The student performed this duty, as 
requested, and spoke so well that his neighbors at once concluded 
that he was the very man, lawyer as he was, to represent them 
in the Legislature, where for nearly thirty years his father had 
served them. At the next election, in a district noted for its 
aversion to lawyers, wherein no lawyer had ever been chosen to 
the Legislature, though many had been candidates, he was elected 
at the head of his ticket. His triumph was doubtless owing in a 
great degree to the paramount influence of his family. Still, 
even we, who knew him only in his gaunt and sad decline, can 
easily imagine that at twenty-six he must have been an engag- 
ing, attractive man. Like most of his race, he was rather slen- 
der, but very erect, with a good deal of dignity and some grace 
in his carriage and demeanor. His eyes were always remarkably 
fine and brilliant. He had a well- developed and strongly set nose, 
cheek-bones high, and cheeks rather sunken. His mouth was 
large, and could never have been a comely feature. His early 
portraits show his hair erect on his forehead, as we all remem- 
ber it, unlike Jackson, whose hair at forty still fell low over his 
forehead. His voice could never have been melodious, but it was 
always powerful. At every period of his life, his manners, when 
in company with his inferiors in age or standing, were extremely 
agreeable, even fascinating. We have heard a well-known edi- 
tor, who began life as a " page " in the Senate-chamber, say that 
there was no Senator whom the pages took such delight in serv- 
ing as Mr. Calhoun. " Why ? " — " Because he was so democra- 
tic." — "How democratic?" — "He was as polite to a page as to 
the President of the Senate, and as considerate of his feelings." 
We have heard another member of the press, whose first employ- 
ment was to report the speeches of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 125 

bear similar testimony to the frank, engaging courtesy, of his in- 
tercourse with the corps of reporters. It is fair, therefore, to con- 
clude that his early popularity at home was due as much to his 
character and manners as to his father's name and the influence 
of his relatives. 

He served two years in the Legislature, and in the intervals 
between the sessions practised law at Abbeville. At once he took 
a leading position in the Legislature. He had been in his seat 
but a few days when the Republican members, as the custom 
then was, met in caucus to nominate a President and Vice-Presi- 
dent of the United States. For Mr. Madison the caucus was 
unanimous, but there was a difference with regard to the Vice- 
Presidency, then filled by the aged George Clinton of New York, 
who represented the anti- Virginian wing of the party in power. 
Mr. Calhoun, in a set speech, opposed the renomination of Gov- 
ernor Clinton, on the ground that in the imminency of a war with 
England the Republican party ought to present an unbroken 
front. He suseested the nomination of John Langdon of New 
Hampshire for the second office. At this late day we cannot de- 
termine whether this suggestion was original with Mr. Calhoun. 
We only know that the caucus affirmed it, and that the nomi- 
nation was afterwards tendered to Mr. Langdon by the Republi- 
can party, and declined by him. Mr. Calhoun's speech on this 
occasion was the expression of Southern opinions as to the for- 
eign policy of the country. The South was then nearly ready for 
war with England, while Northern Republicans still favored Mr. 
Jefferson's non-intercourse policy. In this instance, as in so 
many others, we find the Slave States, which used to plume them- 
selves upon being the conservative element in an else unrestrain- 
able democracy, ready for war first, though far from being the 
worst sufferers from England's piracies. "We should have had no 
war from 1782 to 1865, but for them. "We also find Mr. Cal- 
lioun, in this his first utterance as a public man, the mouth-piece 
of his " section." He has been styled the most inconsistent of 
our statesmen ; but beneath the palpable contradictions of his 
speeches, there is to be noticed a deeper consistency. Whatever 
opinion, whatever policy, he may have advocated, he always 



126 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

spoke the sense of what Mr. Sumner used to call the Southern 
oligarchy. If it changed, he changed. If he appeared sometimes 
to lead it, it was by leading it in the direction in which it wanted 
to go. He was doubtless as sincere in this as any great special 
pleader is in a cause in which all his powers are enlisted. Cal- 
houn's mind was narrow and provincial. He could not have 
been the citizen of a large place. As a statesman he was natu- 
rally the advocate of something special and sectional, something 
not the whole. 

Distinguished in the Legislature, he was elected, late in 1810, 
by a very great majority, to represent his district in Congress. 
In May, 1811, he was married to a second-cousin, Floride Cal- 
houn, who brought a considerable accession to his slender estate. 
November 4, 1811, he took his seat in the House of Represen- 
tatives. Thus, at the early age of twenty-nine, he vras fairly 
launched into public life, with the advantage, usually enjoyed 
then by Southern members, of being independent in his circum- 
stances. Though unknown to the country, his fame had preceded 
him to Washington ; and the Speaker, Mr. Clay, gave him a 
place on the Committee on Foreign Relations. This Committee, 
considering that Congress had been summoned a month earlier 
than usual for the express purpose of dealing with foreign rela- 
tions, was at once the most important and the most conspicuous 
committee of the House. 

Mr. Calhoun's first session gave him national reputation, and 
made him a leader of the war party in Congress. We could per- 
haps say the leader, since Mr. Clay was not upon the floor. After 
surveying the novel scene around him for six weeks, he delivered 
his maiden speech, — a plain, forcible, not extraordinary argu- 
ment in favor of preparing for war. It was prodigiously success- 
ful, so far as the reputation of the speaker was concerned. Mem- 
bers gathered round to congratulate the young orator ; and Fa- 
ther Ritchie (if he was a father then) " hailed this young Caro- 
linian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names upon 
the age in which they live." This speech contains one passage 
which savors of the " chivalric " taint, and indicates the provincial 
mind. In replying to the objection founded on the expenses of a 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 127 

war, he said : " I enter my solemn protest against this low and 
' calculating avarice ' entering this hall of legislation. It is only fit 
for shops and counting-houses, and ought not to disgrace the seat 
of power by its squalid aspect. Whenever it touches sovereign 
power, the nation is ruined. It is too short-sighted to defend 
itself. It is a compromising spirit, always ready to yield a part 
to save the residue. It is too timid to have in itself the laws of 
self-preservation. Sovereign power is never safe but under the 
shield of honor." This was thought very fine talk in those sim- 
ple days among the simple Southern country members. 

As the session progressed, Mr. Calhoun spoke frequently, and 
with greater effect. Wisely he never spoke. In his best efforts 
we see that something which we know not what to name, un- 
less we call it Southermsm. If it were allowable to use a slang 
expression, we should style the passages to which we refer ef- 
fective bosh. The most telling passage in the most telling 
speech which he delivered at this session may serve to illus- 
trate our meaning. Imagine these short, vigorous sentences 
uttered with great rapidity, in a loud, harsh voice, and with 
energy the most intense : — 

" Tie down a hero, and he feels the puncture of a pin ; throw him 
into battle, and he is almost insensible to vital gashes. So in war. 
Impelled alternately by hope and fear, stimulated by revenge, de- 
pressed by shame, or elevated by victory, the people become invinci- 
ble. No privation can shake their fortitude ; no calamity break their 
spirit. Even when equally successful, the contrast between the two 
systems is striking. War and restriction may leave the country equally 
exhausted ; but the latter not only leaves you poor, but, even when 
successful, dispirited, divided, discontented, with diminished patriotism, 
and the morals of a considerable portion of your people corrupted. 
Not so in war. In that state, the common danger unites all, streng- 
thens the bonds of society, and feeds the flame of patriotism. The na- 
tional character mounts to energy. In exchange for the expenses and 
privations of war, you obtain military and naval skill, and a more per- 
fect organization of such parts of your administration as are connected 
with the science of national defence. Sir, are these advantages to be 
counted as trifles in the present state of the world? Can they be 
measured by moneyed valuation? I would prefer a single victory 
over the enejny, by sea or land, to all the good we shall ever derive 



128 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

from the continuation of the Non-importation act. I know not that 
a victory would produce an equal pressure on the enemy ; but I am 
certain of what is of greater consequence, it would be accompanied by 
more salutary effects to ourselves. The memory of Saratoga, Prince- 
ton, and Eutaw is immortal. It is there you will find the country's 
boast and pride, — the inexhaustible source of great and heroic senti- 
ments. But what will history say of restriction ? What examples 
worthy of imitation will it furnish to posterity ? What pride, what 
pleasure will our children find in the events of such times ? Let me 
not be considered romantic. This nation ought to be taught to rely on 
its courage, its fortitude, its skill and virtue, for protection. These are 
the only safeguards in the hour of danger. Man was endued with 
these great qualities for his defence. There is nothing about him that 
indicates that he is to conquer by endurance. He is not incrusted in 
a shell ; he is not taught to rely upon his insensibility, his passive suffer- 
ing, for defence. No, sir ; it is on the invincible mind, on a magnani- 
mous nature, he ought to rely. Here is the superiority of our kind ; it 
is these that render man the lord of the world. Nations rise above 
nations, as they are endued in a greater degree with these brilliant 
qualities." 

This passage is perfectly characteristic of Calhoun, whose 
speeches present hundreds of such inextricable blendings of truth 
and falsehood. 

We have the written testimony of an honorable man, still liv- 
ing, Commodore Charles Stewart, U. S. N., that John C. Calhoun 
was a conscious traitor to the Union as early as 1812. In De- 
cember of that year, Captain Stewart's ship, the Constitution, was 
refitting at the Washington Navy Yard, and the Captain was 
boarding at Mrs. Bushby's, with Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun, and 
many other Republican members. Conversing one evening with 
the new member from South Carolina, he told him that he w^as 
" puzzled " to account for the close alliance which existed between 
the Southern planters and the Northern Democracy. 

" You," said Captain Stewart, " In the South and Southwest, are de- 
cidedly the aristocratic portion of this Union ; you are so In holding 
persons in perpetuity In slavery ; you are so In every domestic quality, 
so in every habit in your lives, living, and actions, so in habits, cus- 
toms, intercourse, and manners ; you neither work with your hands, 
heads, nor any machinery, but live and have your living, not in ac- 



' JOHN C. CALHOUN. 129 

cordance wltli the will of your Creator, but by the sweat of slavery, 
and yet you assume all the attributes, professions, and advantages of 
democracy." 

Mr. Calhoun, aged thirty, replied thus to Captain Stewart, aged 
thirty-four : — 

" I see you speak through the head of a young statesman, and from 
the heart of a patriot, but you lose sight of the politician and the sec- 
tional policy of the people. I admit your conclusions in respect to us 
Southrons. That we are essentially aristocratic, I cannot deny ; but 
we can and do yield much to democracy. Tliis is our sectional policy ; 
we are from necessity thrown upon and solemnly wedded to that party, 
however it may occasionally clash with our feelings, for the conserva- 
tion of our interests. It is through our affiliation with that party in 
the Middle and Western States that we hold power ; but when we 
cease thus to control this nation through a disjointed democracy, or 
any material obstacle in that party which shall tend to throw us out of 
that rule and control, we shall then resort to the dissolution of the 
Union. The compromises in the Constitution, under the circumstances, 
were sufficient for our fathers, but, under the altered condition of our 
country from that period, leave to the South no resource but dissolution ; 
for no amendments to the Constitution could be reached through a 
convention of the people under their three-fourths rule." 

Probably all of our readers have seen this conversation in 
print before. But it is well for us to consider it again and again. 
It is the key to all the seeming inconsistencies of Mr. Calhoun's 
career. He came up to Congress, and took the oath to support 
the Constitution, secretly resolved to break up the country just 
as soon as the Southern planters ceased to control it for the 
maintenance of their peculiar interest. The reader will note, too, 
the distinction made by this young man, who was never youthful, 
between the " statesman " and the " politician," and between the 
" heart of a patriot " and " the sectional policy of the people." 

Turning from his loathsome and despicable exposition to the 
Congressional career of Mr. Calhoun, we find no indication there 
of the latent traitor. He was merely a very active, energetic 
member of the Republican party ; supporting the war by assid- 
uous laboi-s in committee, and by intense declamation of the kind 
of which we have given a specimen. In all his speeches there 
6* I 



130 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 



is not a touch of greatness. He declared that Demosthenes 
was his model, — an orator who was a master of all the arts, 
all the artifices, and all the tricks by which a mass of igno- 
rant and turbulent hearers can be kept attentive, but who has 
nothing to impart to a member of Congress who honestly desires 
to convince his equals. Mr. Calhoun's harangues in the sup- 
posed Demosthenean style gave him, however, great reputation 
out of doors, while his diligence, his dignified and courteous 
manners, gained him warm admii-ers on the floor. He was a 
messmate of Mr. Clay at this time. Besides agreeing in politics, 
they were on terms of cordial personal intimacy. Henry Clay, 
Speaker of the House, was but five years older than Calhoun, 
and in everything but years much younger. Honest patriots 
pointed to these young men with pride a'nd hope, congratulating 
each other that, though the Revolutionary statesmen were grow- 
ing old and passing away, the high places of the Republic would 
be filled, in due time, by men worthy to succeed them. 

When the war was over, a strange thing was to be noted in 
the politics of the United States : the Federal party was dead, 
but the Republican party had adopted its opinions. The disas- 
ters of the war had convinced almost every man of the necessity 
of investing the government with the power to wield the re- 
sources of the country more readily ; and, accordingly, we find 
leading Republicans, like Judge Story, John Quincy Adams, and 
Mr. Clay, favoring the measures which had formerly been the 
special rallying-cries of the Federalists. Judge Story spoke the 
feehng of his party when he wrote, in 1815 : " Let us extend the 
national authority over the whole extent of power given by the 
Constitution. Let us have great militaiy and naval schools, an 
adequate regular army, the broad foundations laid of a permanent 
navy, a national bank, a national bankrupt act," etc., etc. The 
strict-constructionists were almost silenced in the general cry, 
" Let us be a Nation." In the support of all the measures to 
which this feeling gave rise, especially the national bank, inter- 
nal improvements, and a protective tariff, Mr. Calhoun went as 
far as any man, and ferther than most ; for such at that time was 
the humor of the planters. 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 131 

To the principle of a protective tariff he was peculiarly com- 
mitted. It had not been his intention to take part in the debates 
on the Tariff Bill of 1816. On the 6th of April, while he was 
busy writing in a committee-room, Mr. Samuel D. Ingham of 
Pennsylvania, his particular friend and political ally, came to 
him and said that the House had fallen into some confusion while 
discussing the tariff bill, and added, that, as it was " difficult to 
rally so large a body when once broken on a tax bill," he wished 
Mr. Calhoun would speak on the question in order to keep the 
House together. " What can I say ? " replied the member from 
South Carolina. Mr. Ingham, however, persisted, and Mr. Cal- 
houn addressed the House. An amendment had just been intro- 
duced to leave cotton goods unprotected, a proposition which had 
been urged on the ground that Congress had no authority to 
impose any duty except for revenue. On rising to speak, Mr. 
Calhoun at once, and most unequivocally, committed himself to 
the protective principle. He began by saying, that, if the right 
to protect had not heen called in question, he would not have spohen 
at all. It was solely to assist in establishing that right that he 
had been induced, without previous preparation, to take part in 
the debate. He then proceeded to deliver an ordinary protec- 
tionist speech ; without, however, entering upon the questional 
constitutional right. He merely dwelt upon the great benefits to 
be derived from affording to our infant manufactures " immediate 
and ample protection." That the Constitution interposed n(^ 
obstacle, was assumed by him throughout. He concluded by ob- 
serving, that a flourishing manufacturing interest would " bind 
together more closely our widely-spread republic," since " it will 
greatly inci'ease our mutual dependence and intercourse, and 
excite an increased attention to internal improvements, — a sub- 
ject every way so intimately connected with the ultimate attain- 
ment of national strength and the perfection of our political 
institutions." He further observed, that " the liberty and union 
of this country are inseparable," and that the destruction of 
either would involve the destruction of the other. He concluded 
his speech Avith these words : " Disunion, — this single word 
comprehends almost the sum of our political dangers, and against 
it we ought to be perpetually guarded." 



132 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

The time has passed for any public man to claim credit for 
" consistency." A person who, after forty years of public life, 
can truly say that he has never changed an opinion, must be 
either a demigod or a fool. We do not blame Mr. Calhoun for 
ceasing to be a protectionist and becoming a free-trader; for half 
the thinking world has changed sides on that question during the 
last thirty years. A growing mind must necessarily change its 
opinions. But there is a consistency from which no man, public 
or private, can ever be absolved, — the consistency of his state- 
ments with fact. In the year 1833, in his speech on the Force 
Bill, Mr. Calhoun referred to his tariff speech of 1816 in a man- 
ner which excludes him from the ranks of men of honor. He 
had the astonishing audacity to say : " I am constrained in can- 
dor to acknowledge, for I wish to disguise nothing, that the pro- 
tective principle was recognized by the Act of 1816. How this 
was overlooked at the time, it is not in my power to say. It 
escaped my ohservation, which I can account for only on the 
ground that the principle was new, and that my attention was 
engaged by another important subject." The charitable reader 
may interpose here, and say that Mr. Calhoun may have for- 
gotten his speech of 1816. Alas! no. He had that speech be- 
fore him at the time. Vigilant opponents had unearthed it, ami 
kindly presented a copy to the author. We do not believe that, 
in all the debates of the American Congress, there is another in- 
stance of flat falsehood as bad as this. It happens that the 
speech of 1816 and that of 1833 are both published in the same 
volume of the Works of Mr. Calhoun (Vol. II. pp. 163 and 197). 
We advise our readers who have the time and opportunity to 
read both, if they wish to see how a false position necessitates a 
false tongue. Those who take our advice will also discover why 
it was that Mr. Calhoun dared to utter such an impudent false- 
hood : his speeches are such appallingly dull reading, that there 
was very little risk of a busy people's comparing the interpreta- 
tion with the text. 

It was John C. Calhoun who, later in the same session, intro- 
duced the bill for setting apart the dividends and bonus of the 
United States Bank as a permanent fund for internal improve- 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 133 

ments. His speech on this bill, besides going all lengths in favor 
of the internal improvement system, presents some amusing con- 
trasts with his later speeches on the same subject. His hearers 
of 1835 to 1850 must have smUed on reading in the speech of 
1817 such sentences as these: — 

"I am no advocate for refined arguments on the Constitution. The 
instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his 
ingenuity on. It ought to be construed with plain good-sense." " If 
we are restricted in the use of our money to the enumerated powers, 
on what principle can the purchase of Louisiana be justified V " " The 
uniform sense of Congress and the country furnishes better evidence 
of the true interpretation of the Constitution than the most refined and 
subtle arguments." 

Mark this, too : — 

" In a country so extensive and so various in its interests, what is 
necessary for the common interest may apparently be opposed to the 
interest of particular sections. It must he submitted to as the condition 
of our greatness." 

Well might he say, in the same speech : — 

" We may reasonably raise our eyes to a most splendid future, if we 
only act in a manner worthy of our advantages. If, however, neglect- 
ing them, we permit a low, sordid, selfish, sectional spirit to take pos- 
session of this House, this happy scene will vanish. We will divide ; 
and, in its consequences, will follow misery and despotism." 

With this speech before him and before the country, Mr. Cal- 
houn had not the candor to avow, in later years, a complete change 
of opinion. He could only go so far as to say, when opposing the 
purchase of the Madison Papers in 1837, that, " at his entrance 
upon public life, he had inclined to that interpretation of the Con- 
stitution which favored a latitude of powers." Inclined ! He was 
a most enthusiastic and thorough-going champion of that inter- 
pretation. His scheme of internal improvements embraced a net- 
work of post-roads and canals from " Maine to Louisiana," and a 
system of harbors for lake and ocean. He kindled, he glowed, 
at the spectacle which his imagination conjured up, of the whole 
country rendered accessible, and of the distant farmer selling his 
produce at a price not seriously less than that which it brought 



134 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

on the coast. On this subject he became anhnated, interesting, 
almost eloquent. And, so far from this advocacy being confined 
to the period of his " entrance upon political life," he continued 
to be its very warmest exponent as late as 1819, when he had 
been ten years in public life. In that year, having to report upon 
the condition of military roads and fortifications, his flaming zeal 
for a grand and general system of roads and canals frequently 
bursts the bounds of the subject he had to treat. He tells Con- 
gress that the internal improvements which are best for peace are 
best for war also ; and expatiates again upon his dazzling dream 
of " connecting Louisiana by a durable and well-finished road 
with Maine, and Boston with Savannah by a well-established 
line of internal navigation." The United States, he said, with 
its vast systems of lakes, rivers, and mountains, its treble line 
of sea-coast, its valleys large enough for empires, was " a world 
of itself," and needed nothing but to be rendered accessible. 
From what we know of the way things are managed in Congress, 
we should guess that he was invited to make this report for the 
very purpose of affording to the foremost champion of internal 
improvements an opportunity of lending a helping hand to pend- 
ing bills. 

Mr. Calhoun served six years in the House of Representa- 
tives, and grew in the esteem of Congress and the country at 
every session. As it is pleasing to see an old man at the theatre 
entering into the merriment of the play, since it shows that his 
heart has triumphed over the cares of life, and he has preserved 
a little of his youth, so is it eminently graceful in a young man 
to have something of the seriousness of age, especially when his 
conduct is even more austere than his demeanor. Mr. Clay at 
this time was addicted to gaming, like most of the Western and 
Southern members, and he was not averse to the bottle. Mr. 
Webster was reckless in expenditure, fond of his ease, and loved 
a joke better than an argument. In the seclusion of Washington, 
many members lived a very gay, rollicking life. Mr. Calhoun 
never gambled, never drank to excess, never jested, never quar- 
relled, cared nothing for his ease, and tempered the gravity of his 
demeanor by an admirable and winning courtesy. A deep and 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 135 

serious ambition impelled and restrained him. Like boys at 
school, Clay and Webster were eager enough to get to the head 
of the class, but they did not brood over it all the time, and never 
feel comfortable unless they were conning their spelling-book ; 
while little Calhoun expended all his soul in the business, and 
had no time or heart left for play. Consequently he advanced 
rapidly for one of his size, and was universally pointed at as the 
model scholar. Accidents, too, generally favor a rising man. Mr. 
Calhoun made an extremely lucky hit in 1815, which gave mem- 
bers the highest opinion of his sagacity. In opposing an ill- 
digested scheme for a national bank, he told the House that the 
bill was so obviously defective and unwise, that, if news of peace 
should arrive that day, it would not receive fifteen votes. News 
of peace, which was totally unexpected, did arrive that very 
hour, and the bill was rejected the next day by about the major- 
ity which he had predicted. At the next session, he won an im- 
mense reputation for firmness. An act was passed changing the 
mode of compensating members of Congress from six dollars a 
day to fifteen hundred dollars a year. We were a nation of rus- 
tics then ; and this harmless measure excited a disgust in the 
popular mind so intense and general, that most of the members 
who had. voted for it declined to present themselves for re-elec- 
tion. Calhoun was one of the guilty ones. Popular as he was 
in his district, supported by two powerful family connections, — 
his own and his wife's, — admired throughout the State as one 
who had done honor to it upon the conspicuous scene of Congres- 
sional debate, — even he was threatened with defeat. Formi- 
dable candidates presented themselves. In these circumstances 
he mounted the stump, boldly justified his vote, and defended the 
odious bill. He was handsomely re-elected, and when the bill 
was up for repeal in the House he again supported it with all his 
former energy. At the conclusion of his speech, a member from 
New York, Mr. Grosvenor, a political opponent, with whom Cal- 
houn had not been on speaking terms for two years, sprang to 
his feet, enraptured, and began to express his approval of the 
speech in ordinary parliamentary language. But his feelings 
could not be relieved in that manner. He paused a moment, and 
then said : — 



136 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

" Mr. Speaker, I will not be restrained. No barrier shall exist wliicb 
I will not leap over for tbe purpose of offering to that gentleman my 
thanks for the judicious, independent, and national course which he has 
pursued in this House for the last two years, and particularly upon the 
subject now before us. Let the honorable gentleman continue with the 
same manly independence, aloof from party views and local prejudices, 
to pursue the great interests of his country, and fulfil the high destiny 
for which it is manifest he was born. The buzz of popular applause 
may not cheer him on his way, but he will inevitably arrive at a high 
and happy elevation in the view of his country and the world." 

Such scenes as this enhance the prestige of a rising man. 
Menabers weak at home envied at once and admired a man who 
was strong enough to bring over his constituents to his opinion. 
He was fortunate, too, in this, that a triumph so striking occurred 
just before he left the House for another sjjhere of public life. 
He had what the actors call a splendid exit. 

The inauguration of Mr. Monroe on the 4th of March, 1817, 
ushered in the era of good feeling, and gave to Henry Clay the 
first of his long series of disappointments. As Secretaries of 
State had usually succeeded their chiefs in the Presidency, the 
appointment of Mr. Adams to that office by Mr. Monroe was re- 
garded almost in the light of a nomination to the succession. To 
add to Mr. Clay's mortification, he was tendered the post of Sec- 
retary of War, which he had declined a year before, and now 
again declined. The President next selected General Jackson, 
then in the undiramed lustre of his military renown, and still 
holding his Major- General's commission. He received, however, 
a private notification that General Jackson would not accept a 
place in the Cabinet. The Pi'esident then offered the post to the 
aged Governor Isaac Shelby of Kentucky, who had the good 
sense to decline it. There appear to have been negotiations with 
other individuals, but at length, in October, 1817, the place was 
offered to Mr. Calhoun, who, after much hesitation, accepted it, 
and entered upon the discharge of its duties in December. His 
friends, we are told, unanimously disapproved his going into office, 
as they believed him formed to shine in debate rather than in the 
transaction of business. 

Fortune favored him again. Entering the office after a long 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 137 

vacancy, and when It was filled with the unfinished business of 
the war, — fifty million dollars of deferred claims, for one item, 
— he had the same easy opportunity for distinction which a stew- 
ard has who takes charge of an estate just out of chancery, and 
under a new proprietor who has plenty of money. The sweep- 
ing up of the dead leaves, the gathering of the fallen branches, and 
the weeding out of the paths, changes the aspect of the place, and 
gives the passer-by a prodigious Idea of the efficiency of the new 
broom. The country was alive, too, to the necessity of coast and 
frontier defences, and there was much building of forts during the 
seven years of Mr. Calhoun's tenure of place. Respecting the 
manner in which he discharged the multifarious and unusual du- 
ties of his office, we have never heard anything but commenda- 
tion. He was prompt, punctual, diligent, courteous, and firm. 
The rules which he drew up for the regulation of the War De- 
partment remained in force, little changed, until the magnitude of 
the late contest abolished or suspended all ancient methods. The 
claims of the soldiers were rapidly examined and passed upon. 
It was Mr. Calhoun who first endeavored to collect considerable 
bodies of troops for instruction at one post. He had but six 
thousand men In all, but he contrived to get together several com- 
panies of artillery at Fortress Monroe for drill. He appeared to 
take much interest in the expenditure of the ten thousand dollars 
a year which Congress voted for the education of the Indians. 
He reduced the expenses of his office, which was a very popular 
thing at that day. He never appointed nor removed a clerk for 
opinion's sake. In seven years he only removed two clerks, 
both for cause, and to both were given In writing the reasons of 
their removal. There was no special merit in this, for at that 
day to do otherwise would have been deemed infamous. 

Mr. Calhoun, as a member of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet, still 
played the part of a national man, and supported the measures 
of his party without exception. Scarcely a trace of the sectional 
champion yet appears. In 1819, he gave a written opinion favor- 
ing the cession of Texas In exchange for Florida ; the motive of 
which was to avoid alarming the North by the prospective Increase 
of Slave States. In later years, Mr. Calhoun, of course, wished 



138 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

to deny this ; and the written opinions of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet 
on that question mysteriously disappeared from the archives of 
the Stale Department. We have the positive testimony of Mr. 
John Quincy Adams, that Calhoun, in common with most Southern 
men of that day, approved the Missouri Compromise of 1820, 
and gave a written opinion that it was a constitutional measure. 
That he was still an enthusiast for internal improvements, we have 
already mentioned. 

The real difficulty of the "War Department, however, as of the 
State Department, during the Monroe administration, was a cer- 
tain Major-General Andrew Jackson, commanding the Military 
Department of the South. The popularity of the man who had 
restored the nation's self-love by ending a disasti'ous war with a 
dazzling and most unexpected victory, was something different 
from the respect which we all now feel for the generals distin- 
guished in the late war. The first honors of the late war are 
divided among four chieftains, each of whom contributed to the 
final success at least one victory that was essential to it. But in 
1815, among the military heroes of the war that had just closed 
General Jackson stood peerless and alone. His success in defend- 
ing the Southwest, ending in a blaze of glory below New Orleans, 
utterly eclipsed all the other achievements of the war, excepting 
alone the darling triumphs on the ocean and the lakes. The defer- 
ential spirit of Mr. Monroe's letters to the General, and the readi- 
ness of every one everywhere to comply with his wishes, show 
that his popularity, even then, constituted him a power in the Re- 
public. It was said in later times, that " General Jackson's pop- 
ularity could stand anything," and in one sense this was true : it 
could stand anything that General Jackson was likely to do. 
Andrew Jackson could never have done a cowardly act, or be- 
trayed a friend, or knowingly violated a trust, or broken his word, 
or forgotten a debt. He was always so entirely certain that he, 
Andrew Jackson, was in the right, his conviction on this point was 
so free from the least quaver of doubt, that he could always con- 
vince other men that he was right, and carry the multitude with 
him. His honestj-, courage, and inflexible resolution, joined to 
his ignorance, narrowness, intensity, and liability to prejudice. 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 139 

rendered him at once the idol of his countrymen and the plague 
of all men with whom he had official connection. Drop an An- 
drew Jackson from the clouds upon any spot of earth inhabited 
by men, and he will have half a dozen deadly feuds upon his 
hands in thirty days. 

Mr. Calhoun inherited a quarrel with Jackson from George 
Graham, his pro tempore predecessor in the War Department. 
This Mr. Graham was the gentleman (" spy," Jackson termed 
him) despatched by President Jefferson in 1806 to the Western 
country to look into the mysterious proceedings of Aaron Burr, 
which led to the explosion of Burr's scheme. This was enough 
to secure the bitterest enmity of Jackson, who wholly and always 
favored Burr's design of annihilating the Spanish power in North 
America, and who, as President of the United States, rewarded 
Burr's followers, and covertly assisted Houston to carry out part 
of Burr's project. Graham had sent orders to Jackson's subor- 
dinates directly, instead of sending them through the chief of tlie 
Department. Jackson, after due remonstrance, ordered his offi- 
cers not to obey any orders but such as were communicated by or 
through himself. This was a high-handed measure ; but Mr. 
Calhoun, on coming into power, passed it by without notice, and 
conceded the substance of Jackson's demand, — as he ought. 
This was so exquisitely pleasing to General Jackson, that he was 
well affiected by it for many years towards Mr. Calhoun. Among 
the younger public men of that day, there was no one who stood 
so high in Jackson's regard as the Secretary of War. 

The Florida war followed in 1818. When the report of Gen- 
eral Jackson's invasion of Florida, and of the execution of Ar- 
buthnot and Armbrister reached Washington, Mr. Calhoun was 
the only man in the Cabinet who expressed the opinion that 
General Jackson had transcended his powers, and ought to be 
brought before a court of inquiry. This opinion he supported 
with ardor, until it was overruled by the President, who was 
chiefly influenced by Mr. Adams, the Secretary of State. How 
keenly General Jackson resented the course of Mr. Calhoun on 
this occasion, when, eleven years afterwards, he discovered it, is 
sufficiently well known. We believe, however, that the facts jus- 



1-iO JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

tify Calhoun and condemn Jackson. Just before going to the seat 
of war, the General wrote privately to the President, strongly 
recommending the seizure of Florida, and added these words : 
" This can be done without implicating the government. Let it 
be signified to me through any channel (say, Mr. J. Rhea) that 
the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United 
States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished." General 
Jackson dwells, in his " Exposition " of this matter, upon the fact 
that Mr. Calhoun was the first man in "Washington who read this 
letter. But he does not say that Mr. Calhoun was aware that 
Mr. Rhea had been commissioned to answer the letter, and had 
answered it in accordance with General Jackson's wishes. And 
if the Rhea correspondence justified the seizure of Florida, it did 
not justify the execution of the harmless Scottish trader Arbuth- 
not, who, so far from "instigating" the war, had exerted the 
whole of his influence to prevent it. It is an honor to Mr. Cal- 
houn to have been the only man in the Cabinet to call for an in- 
quiry into proceedings which disgraced the United States and 
came near involving the country in war. We have always felt 
it to be a blot upon the memol-y of John Quincy Adams, that he 
did not join Mr. Calhoun in demanding the trial of General Jack- 
son ; and we have not been able to attribute his conduct to any- 
thing but the supposed necessities of his position as a candidate 
for the succession. 

Readers versed in political history need not be reminded that 
nearly every individual in the Cabinet of Mr, Monroe had hopes 
of succeeding him. Mr. Adams had, of course ; for he was the 
premier. Mr. Crawford, of course; for it had been "arranged" 
at the last caucus that he was to follow Mr. Monroe, to whose 
claims he had deferred on that express condition. Henry Clay, 
the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and De Witt 
Clinton of New York, had expectations. All these gentlemen 
had " claims " which both their party and the public could recog- 
nize. Mr. Calhoun, too, who was forty-two years of age in Mr. 
Monroe's last year of service, boldly entered the lists ; relying 
upon the united support of the South and the support of the 
manufacturing States of the North, led by Pennsylvania. That 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 141 

against such competitors he had any ground at all to hope for 
success, shows how rapid and how real had been his progress 
toward a first-rate national position. If our readers will turn to 
the letters of Webster, Story, "Wirt, Adams, Jackson, and others 
of that circle of distinguished men, they will see many evidences 
of the extravagant estimation in which he was held in 1824. 
They appear to have all seen in him the material for a President, 
though not yet quite mature for the position. They all deemed 
him a man of unsullied honor, of devoted patriotism, of perfect 
sincerity, and of immense ability, — so assiduously had he played 
the part of the good boy. 

How the great popularity of General Jackson was adroitly 
used by two or three invisible wire-pullers to defeat the aspira- 
tions of these too eager candidates, and how from the general 
wreck of their hopes Mr. Calhoun had the dexterity to emerge 
Vice-President of the United States, has been related with the 
amplest detail, and need not be repeated here. Mr. Calhoun's 
position seemed then to combine all the advantages which a poli- 
tician of forty-three could desire or imagine. By withdrawing 
his name from the list of candidates in such a way as to lead 
General Jackson to suppose that he had done so in his favor, he 
seemed to place the General under obligations to him. By 
secretly manifesting a preference for Mr. Adams (which he 
really felt) when the election devolved upon the House of Repre- 
sentatives, he had gained friends among the adherents of the suc- 
cessful candidate. His withdrawal was accepted by the public as 
an evidence of modesty becoming the youngest candidate. Fi- 
nally he was actually Vice-President, as John Adams had been, 
as Jefferson had been, before their elevation to the highest place. 
True, Henry Clay, as Secretary of State, was in the established 
line of succession ; but, as time wore on, it became very manifest 
that the re-election of Mr. Adams, upon which Mr. Clay's hopes 
depended, was itself exceedingly doubtful ; and we accordingly 
find Mr. Calhoun numbered in the ranks of the opposition. Tow- 
ard the close of Mr. Adams's Presidency, the question of real 
interest in the inner circle of politicians was, not who should suc- 
ceed John Quincy Adams in 1829, but who should succeed 



142 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

Andrew Jackson in 1833 ; and already the choice was narrow- 
ing to two men, — Martin Van Buren and John C. Calhoun. 

During Mr. Calhoun's first terra in the Vice-Presidency, — 
1825 to 1829, — a most important change took place in his polit- 
ical position, which controlled all his future career. While he 
was Secretary of War, — 1817 to 1824, — he resided with his 
family in Washington, and shared in the nationalizing influences 
of the place. When he was elected Vice-President, he removed 
to a plantation called Fort Hill, in the western part of South 
Carolina, where he was once more subjected to the intense and 
narrow provincialism of the planting States. And there was 
nothing in the character or in the acquirements of his mind to 
counteract that influence. Mr. Calhoun was not a student ; he 
probed nothing to the bottom ; his information on all subjects 
was small in quantity, and second-hand in quality. Nor was he 
a patient thinker. Any stray fact or notion that he met with in 
bis hasty desultory reading, which chanced to give apparent sup- 
port to a favorite theory or paradox of his own, he seized upon 
eagerly, paraded it in triumph, but pondered it little ; while the 
weightiest facts which controverted his opinion he brushed aside' 
without the slightest consideration. His mind was as arrogant 
as his manners were courteous. Every one who ever conversed 
with him must remember his positive, peremptory, unanswerable 
" Not at all, not at all" whenever one of his favorite positions was 
assailed. He was wholly a special pleader; he never summed 
up the testimony. W^e find in his works no evidence that 
he had read the masters in political economy ; not even Adam 
Smith, whose reputation was at its height during the first half of 
his public life. In history he was the merest smatterer, though 
it was his favorite reading, and he was always talking about 
Sparta, Athens, and Rome. The slenderness of his fortune pre- 
vented his travelling. He never saw Europe ; and if he ever 
visited the Northern States, after leaving college, his stay was 
short. The little that he knew of life was gathered in three 
places, all of which were of an exceptional and artificial charac- 
ter, — the city of Washington, the up-country of South Carolina, 
and the luxurious, reactionary city of Charleston. His mind, 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 1-43 

naturally narrow and intense, became, by revolving always in 
this narrow sphere and breathing a close and tainted atmosphere, 
more and more fixed in its narrowness and more intense in its 
operations. 

This man, moreover, was consumed by a poor ambition : he 
lusted after the Presidency. The rapidity of his progress in 
public life, the high offices he had held, the extravagant eulo- 
giums he had received from colleagues and the press, deceived 
him as to the real nature of his position before the country, and 
blinded him to the superior chances of other men. Five times in 
his life he made a distinct clutch at the bawble, but never with 
such prospect of success that any man could discern it but him- 
self and those who used his eyes. It is a satisfaction to know 
that, of the Presidency seekers, — Clay, Webster, Calhoun, 
Douglas, "Wise, Breckenridge, Tyler, Fillmore, Clinton, Burr, 
Cass, Buchanan, and Van Buren, — only two won the prize, and 
those two only by a series of accidents which had little to do with 
their own exertions. "We can almost lay it down as a law of this 
Republic, that no man who makes the Presidency the principal 
object of his public life will ever be President. The Presidency 
is an accident, and such it will probably remain. 

Mr. Vice-President Calhoun found his Carolina discontented 
in 1824, when he took up his abode at Fort Hill. Since the 
Revolution, South Carolina had never been satisfied, and had 
never had reason to be. The cotton-gin had appeased her for a 
while, but had not suspended the operation of the causes which 
produced the stagnation of the South. Profuse expenditure, un- 
skilful agriculture, the costliest system of labor in the Avorld, and 
no immigration, still kept Irelandizing the Southern States ; 
while the North was advancing and improving to such a degree 
as to attract emigrants from all lands. The contrast was painful 
to Southern men, and to most of them it was mysterious. South- 
ern politicians came to the conclusion that the cause at once of 
Northern prosperity and Southern poverty was the protective 
tariff and the appropriations for internal improvements, but 
chiefly the tariff. In 1824, when Mr. Calhoun went home, the 
tarifi" on some leading articles had been increased, and the South 



144 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

was in a ferment of opposition to the protective system. If Mr. 
Calhoun had been a wise and honest man, he would have re- 
minded his friends that the decline of the South had been a sub- 
ject of remark from the peace of 1783, and therefore could not 
have been caused by the tariff of 1816, or 1820, or 1824. He 
would have told them that slavery, as known in the Southern 
States, demands virgin lands, — must have, every few years, its 
cotton-gin, its Louisiana, its Cherokee country, its something, to 
give new value to its products or new scope for its operations. He 
might have added that the tariff of 1824 was a grievance, did tend 
to give premature development to a manufacturing system, and 
was a fair ground for a national issue between parties. The thing 
which he did was this : he adopted the view of the matter which 
was predominant in the extreme South, and accepted the leader- 
ship of the extreme Southern, anti-tariff, strict-constructionist wing 
of the Democratic party. He echoed the prevailing opinion, that 
the tariff and the internal improvement system, to both of which 
he was fully committed, were the sole causes of Southern stagna- 
tion ; since by the one their money was taken from them, and by 
the other it was mostly spent where it did them no good. 

He was, of course, soon involved in a snarl of contradictions, 
from which he never could disentangle himself. Let us pass to 
the year 1828, a most important one in the history of the country 
and of Mr. Calhoun ; for then occurred the first of the long series 
of events which terminated with the surrender of the last Rebel 
army in 1865. The first act directly tending to a war between 
the South and the United States bears date December 6, 1828 ; 
and it was the act of John C. Calhoun. 

It was the year of that Presidential election which placed An- 
drew Jackson in the White House, and re-elected Mr. Calhoun to 
the Vice-Presidency. It was the year that terminated the hon- 
orable part of Mr. Calhoun's career and began the dishonorable. 
His political position in the canvass was utterly false, as he him- 
self afterwards confessed. On the one hand, he was supporting 
for the Presidency a man committed to the policy of protection ; 
and on the other, he became the organ and mouthpiece of the 
Southern party, whose opposition to the protective principle was 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 145 

tending to the point of armed resistance to it. The tariff bill of 
1828, which they termed the bill of abominations, had excited 
the most heated opposition in the cotton States, and especially in 
South Carolina. This act was passed in the spring of the very 
year in which those States voted for a man who had publicly in- 
dorsed the principle involved in it ; and we see Mr. Calhoun 
heading the party who were electioneering for Jackson, and the 
party who were considering the policy of nullifying the act which 
he had approved. His Presidential aspirations bound him to the 
support of General Jackson ; but the first, the fundamental ne- 
cessity of his position was to hold possession of South Carolina. 

The burden of Mr. Calhoun's later speeches was the reconcili- 
ation of the last part of his public life with the first. The task 
was difiicult, for there is not a leading proposition in his speeches 
after 1830 which is not refuted by arguments to be found in his 
public utterances before 1828. In his speech on the Force Bill, 
in 1834, he volunteered an explanation of the apparent inconsist- 
ency between his support of General Jackson in 1828, and his 
authorship of the " South Carolina Exposition " in the same year. 
Falsehood and truth are strangely interwoven in almost every 
sentence of his later writings ; and there is also that vagueness 
in them which comes of a superfluity of words. He says, that 
for the strict-constructionist party to have presented a candidate 
openly and fully identified with their opinions would have been to 
court defeat ; and thus they were obliged either to abandon the 
contest, or to select a candidate " whose opinions were interme- 
diate or doubtful on the subject which divided the two sections," 
— a candidate " who, at best, was but a choice of evils." Be- 
sides, General Jackson was a Southern man, and it was hoped 
that, notwithstanding his want of experience, knowledge, and self- 
control, the advisers whom he would invite to assist him would 
compensate for those defects. Then Blr. Calhoun proceeds to 
state, that the contest turned chiefly upon the question of protec- 
tion or free trade ; and the strife was, which of the two parties 
should go farthest in the advocacy of protection. The result was, 
he says, that the tariff bill of 1828 was passed, — " that disas- 
trous measure which has brought so many calamities upon us, 
7 J 



146 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

and put in peril the liberty and union of the country," and 
" poured millions into the treasury beyond the most extravagant 
wants of the country." 

The passage of this tariff bill was accomplished by the tact of 
Martin Van Buren, aided by Major Eaton, Senator from Tennes- 
see. Mr. Van Buren was the predestined chief of General Jack- 
son's Cabinet, and Major Eaton was the confidant, agent, and 
travelling manager of the Jacksonian wire-pullers, besides being 
the General's own intimate friend. The events of that session 
notified Mr. Calhoun that, however manageable General Jackson 
might be, he was not likely to fall info the custody of the Vice- 
President. General Jackson's election being considered certain, 
the question was alone interesting, who should possess him for 
the purposes of the succession. The prospect, as surveyed that 
winter from the Vice-President's chair, was not assuring to the 
occupant of that lofty seat. If General Jackson could not be 
used as a fulcrum for the further elevation of Mr. Calhoun, would 
it not be advisable to begin to cast about for another ? 

The tariff bill of 1828 was passed before the Presidential can- 
vass had set in with its last severity. There was time for Mr. 
Calhoun to withdraw from the support of the man whose nearest 
friends had carried it through the Senate under his eyes. He 
did not do so. He went home, after the adjournment of Con- 
gress, to labor with all his might for the election of a protection- 
ist, and to employ his leisure hours in the composition of that 
once famous paper called the " South Carolina Exposition," in 
which protection was declared to be an evil so intolerable as to 
justify the nullification of an act founded upon it. This Exposi- 
tion was the beginning of our woe, — the baleful egg from which 
were hatched nullification, treason, civil war, and the desolation 
of the Southern States. Here is Mr. Calhoun's own account of 
the manner in which what he correctly styles " the double opera- 
tion " was " pushed on " in the summer of 1828 : — 

" This disastrous event [the passage of the tariff bill of 1828] opened 
our eyes (I mean myself and those immediately connected with me) 
as to the full extent of the danger and oppression of the protective 
system, and the hazard of failing to effect the i-eform intended through 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 147 

tbe election of General Jackson. With these disclosures, it became 
necessary to seek some other ultimate, but more certain measure of 
protection. We turned to the Constitution to find this remedy. We 
directed a more diligent and careful scrutiny into its provisions, in or- 
der to understand fully the nature and character of our political sys- 
tem. We found a certain and effectual remedy in that great funda- 
mental division of the powers of the system between this government 
and its Independent co-ordinates, the separate governments of the 
States, — to be called into action to arrest the unconstitutional acts of 
this government by the interposition of the States, — the paramount 
source from which both governments derive their power. But in re- 
lying on this our ultimate remedy, we did not abate our zeal in the 
Presidential canvass ; we still hoped that General Jackson, if elect- 
ed, would effect the necessary reform, and thereby supersede the ne- 
cessity for calling into action the sovereign authority of the State, 
•which we were anxious to avoid. With these views the two were 
pushed with equal zeal at the same time ; which double operation 
commenced in the fall of 1828, but a few months after the passage of 
the tariff act of that year ; and at the meeting of the Legislature of 
the State, at the same period, a paper known as the South Carolina 
Exposition was reported to that body, containing a full development, as 
well on the constitutional point as on the operation of the protective 
system, preparatory to a state of things which might eventually render 
the action of the State necessary in order to protect her rights and in- 
terest, and to stay a course of policy which we believed would, if nor, 
arrested, prove destructive of liberty and the Constitution." — Works, 
II. 396. 

Mr. Calhoun omits, however, to mention that the Exposition 
was not presented to the Legislature of South Carolina until 
after the Presidential election had been decided. Nor did he 
inform his hearers that the author of the paper was Mr. Vice- 
President Calhoun. Either there was a great dearth of literary- 
ability in that body, or else Mr. Calhoun had little confidence in 
it ; for nearly all the ponderous documents on nullification given 
to the world in its name were penned by Mr. Calhoun, and ap- 
pear in his collected works. If the Legislature addressed its 
constituents or the people of the United States on this subject, it 
was he who prepared the draft. The South Carolina Exposition 
was found among his papei's in his own handwriting, and it was 



148 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

adopted by the Legislature with only a few alterations and sup- 
pressions. There never was a piece of mischief more completely 
the work of one man than the nullification troubles of 1833 - 
34. 

The South Carolina Exposition, when Mr. Calhoun had com- 
pleted it, was brought before the public by one of the usual 
methods. The Legislature of South Carolina passed the follow- 
ing resolutions : — 

" Resolved, That it is expedient to protest against the unconstitu- 
tional and oppressive operation of the system of protective duties, and 
to have such protest entered on the journals of the Senate of the Unit- 
ed States. Also, to make a public exjjosltion of our wrongs, and of 
the remedies within our power, to be communicated to our sister 
States, with a request that they will co-operate with this State in pro- 
curing a repeal of the tariff for protection, and an abandonment of the 
principle ; and if the repeal be not procured, that they will co-operate 
in such measures as may be necessary for averting the evil. 

" Resolved, That a committee of seven be raised to carry the fore- 
going resolution into effect." 

The resolution having been carried, the following gentlemen 
were appointed to father Mr. Calhoun's paper : James Gregg, D. 
L. Wardlaw, Hugh S. Legar^, Arthur P. Hayne, William C. 
Preston, William Elliott, and R. Barnwell Smith. The duty of 
this committee consisted in causing a copy of Mr. Calhoun's pa- 
per to be made and presenting it to the Legislature. This was 
promptly done ; and the Exposition was adopted by the Legisla- 
ture on the 6th of December, 1828. Whether any protest was 
forwarded to the Secretary of the United States Senate for in- 
sertion in the journal does not appear. We only know that five 
thousand copies of this wearisome and stupid Exposition were 
ordered to be printed, and that in the hubbub of the incoming of 
a new administration it attracted scarcely any attention beyond 
the little knot of original nullifiers. Indeed, Mr. Calhoun's writ- 
ings on this subject were " protected " by their own length and 
dulness. No creature ever read one of them quite through, ex- 
cept for a special purpose. 

The leading assertions of this Exposition are these: — 1. Ev- 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 149 

ery duty imposed for protection is a violation of the Constitution, 
which empowers Congress to impose taxes for revenue only. 2. 
The ivhole burden of the protective system is borne by agricul- 
ture and commerce. 3. The lohole of the advantages of protec- 
tion accrue to the manufacturing States. 4. In other words, the 
South, the Southwest, and two or three commercial cities, support 
the government, and pour a stream of treasure into the coffers of 
manufacturers. 5. The result must soon be, that the people of 
South Carolina will have either to abandon the culture of rice 
and cotton, and remove to some other country, or else to become 
a manufacturing community, which would only be ruin in another 
form. 

Lest the reader should find it impossible to believe that any 
man out of a lunatic asylum could publish such propositions as 
this last, we will give the passage. Mr. Calhoun is endeavoring 
to show that Europe will at length retaliate by placing high duties 
upon American cotton and rice. At least that appears to be what 
he is aiming at. 

" We already see indications of a commercial warfare, the termina- 
tion of which no one can conjecture, though our fate may easily be. 
The last remains of our great and once flourishing agriculture must be 
annihilated in the conflict. In the first instance we will * be thrown on 
the home market, which cannot consume a fourth of our products ; and, 
instead of supplying the world, as we would with free trade, we would 
be compelled to abandon the cultivation of three fourths of what we 
now raise, and receive for the residue whatever the manufacturers, who 
would then have their policy consummated by the entire possession of 
our market, might choose to give. Forced to abandon our ancient and 
favorite pursuit, to which our soil, climate, habits, and pecuUar labor 
are adapted, at an immense sacrifice of property, we would be com- 
pelled, without capital, experience, or skill, and with a population un- 
tried in such pursuits, to attempt to become the rivals, instead of the 
customers, of the manufacturing States. The result is not doubtful. 
If they, by superior capital and skill, should keep down successful com- 
petition on our part, we would be doomed to toil at our unprofitable 
agriculture, — selling at the prices which a single and very limited 

* Mr. Calhoun had still Irish enough in his composition to use " will " for 

" shall." 



150 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

market might give. But, on the contrary, if our necessity should tri- 
umph over their capital and skill, if, instead of raw cotton we should 
ship to the manufacturing States cotton yarn and cotton goods, the 
thoughtful must see that it would inevitably bring about a state of 
things which could not long continue. Those who now i7mle war on 
our gains would then make it on our labor. They would not tolerate 
that those who now cultivate our plantations, and furnish them Avith 
the material and the market for the product of their arts, should, by 
becomino- their rivals, take bread from the mouths of their wives and 
children. The committee will not pursue this painful subject; but as 
they clearly see that the system if not arrested, must bring the coun- 
try to this hazardous extremity, neither prudence nor patriotism would 
permit them to pass it by without raising a warning voice against an 
evil of so menacing a character." — Worhs., VI. 12. 

The only question which arises in the mind of present readers 
of such passages (which abound in the writings of Mr. Calhoun) 
is this : "Were they the chimeras of a morbid, or the utterances 
of a false mind ? Those who knew him differ in opinion on this 
point. For our part, we believe such passages to have been in- 
serted for the sole purpose of alarming the people of South Car 
olina, so as to render them the more subservient to his will. It 
is the stale trick of the demagogue, as well as of the false priest, 
to subjugate the mind by terrifying it. 

Mr. Calhoun concludes his Exposition by bringing forward his 
remedy for the frightful evils which he had conjured up. That 
remedy, of course, was nullification. The State of South Caro- 
lina, after giving due warning, must declare the protective acts 
" null and void " in the State of South Carolina after a certain 
date ; and then, unless Congress repealed them in time, refuse 
obedience to them. Whether this should be done by the Legisla- 
ture or by a convention called for the purpose, Mr. Calhoun would 
not say ; but he evidently preferred a convention. He advised, 
however, that nothing be done hastily ; that time should be af- 
forded to the dominant majority for further reflection. Delay, he 
remarked, was the more to be recommended, because of " the 
great political revolution which will displace from power, on the 
4th of March next, those who have acquired authority by setting 
the will of the people at defiance, and which will briug in an em- 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 151 

inent citizen, distinguished for his services to his country and his 
justice and patriotism " ; under whom, it was hoped, there would 
be " a complete restoration of the pure principles of our govern- 
ment." This passage Mr. Calhoun could write after witnessing 
the manoeuvres of Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Eaton ! If the 
friends of Mr. Adams had set the will of the people at defiance 
on the tariff question, what had the supporters of General Jack- 
son done ? In truth, this menace of nullification was the second 
string to the bow of the Vice-President. It was not yet ascer- 
tained which was going to possess and use General Jackson, — 
the placid and flexible Van Buren, or the headstrong, short- 
sighted, and uncomfortable Calhoun. Nullification, as he used 
daily to declare, was a " reserved power." 

At the time of General Jackson's inauguration, it would have 
puzzled an acute politician to decide which of the two aspirants 
had the best chance of succeeding the General. The President 
seemed equally well affected toward both. One was Secretary 
of State, the other Vice-President. Van Buren, inheriting the 
political tactics of Burr, was lord paramount in the great State 
of New York, and Calhoun was all-powerful in his own State 
and very influential in all the region of cotton and rice. In the 
Cabinet Callioun had two friends, and one tried and devoted ally 
(Ingham), while Van Buren could only boast of Major Eaton, 
Secretary of War ; and the tie that bound them together was 
political far more than personal. In the public mind, Calhoun 
towered above his rival, for he had been longer in the national 
councils, had held offices that drew upon him the attention of 
the whole country, and had formerly been distinguished as an 
orator. If any one had been rash enough in 1829 to intimate to 
Mr. Calhoun that Martin Van Buren stood before the country on 
a par with himself, he would have pitied the ignorance of that 
rash man. 

Under despotic governments, like those of Louis XIV. and 
Andrew Jackson, no calculation can be made as to the future of 
any public man, because his future depends upon the caprice 
of the despot, which cannot be foretold. Six short weeks — 
nay, not so much, not six — sufficed to estrange the mind of the 



152 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

President from Calhoun, and implant within him a passion to 
promote the interests of Van Buren. Our readers, we presume, 
all know how this was brought to pass. It was simply that Mr. 
Calhoun would not, and Mr. Van Buren would, call upon Mrs. 
Eaton. All the other influences that were brought to bear upon 
the President's singular mind were nothing in comparison with 
this. Daniel Webster uttered only the truth when he wrote, at 
the time, to his friend Dutton, that the " Aaron's serpent among 
the President's desires was a settled purpose of making out the 
lady, of whom so much has been said, a person of reputation " ; 
and that this x'idiculous affair would "probably determine who 
should be the successor to the present chief magistrate." It had 
precisely that effect. We have shown elsewhere the successive 
manoeuvres by which this was effected, and how vigorously but 
unskilfully Calhoun struggled to avert his fate. We cannot and 
need not repeat the story ; nor can we go over again the history 
of the Nullification imbroglio, which began with the South Caro- 
lina Exposition in 1828, and ended very soon after Calhoun had 
received a private notification that the instant news reached 
AVashington of an overt act of treason in South Carolina, the 
author and fomenter of that treason would be arrested and held 
for trial as a traitor. 

One flict alone suffices to prove that, in bringing on the Nulli- 
fication troubles, Calhoun's motive was factious. "VVlien General 
Jackson saw the coming storm, he did two things. First, he 
prepared to maintain the authority of the United States by force. 
Secondly, he used all his influence with Congress to have the 
cause of Southern discontent removed. General Jackson felt 
tliat the argument of the anti-tariff men, in view of the speedy 
extinction of the national debt, was unanswerable. Pie believed it 
was absurd to go on raising ten or twelve millions a year more than 
the government could spend, merely for the sake of protecting 
Northern manufactures. Accordingly, a bill was introduced which 
aimed to do just what the nullifiers had been clamoring for, that 
is, to reduce the revenue to the amount required by the govern- 
ment. If Mr. Calhoun had supported this measure, he could 
have carried it. He gave it no support ; but exerted all his 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 153 

influence in favor of the Clay Compromise, which was expressly 
intended to save as much of the protective system as could be 
saved, and which reduced duties gradually, instead of suddenly. 
Rather than permit the abhorred administration to have the 
glory of pacificating the country, this lofty Roman stooped to a 
coalition with his personal enemy, Henry Clay, the champion 
and the soul of the protectionist party. 

No words can depict the bitterness of Calhoun's disappoint- 
ment and mortification at being distanced by a man whom he 
despised so cordially as he did Van Bureu. To comprehend it, 
his whole subsequent career must be studied. The numerous 
covert allusions to the subject in his speeches and writings are 
surcharged with rancor ; and it was observed that, whenever his 
mind reverted to it, his manner, the tone of his voice, and every 
gesture testified to the intensity of his feelings. " Every South- 
ern man," said he on one occasion, " who is true to the interests 
of his section, and faithful to the duties which Providence has 
allotted him, will be forever excluded from the honors and 
emoluments of this government, which will be reserved only for 
those who have qualified themselves by political prostitution for 
admission into the Magdalen Asylum." His face, too, from this 
time, assumed that haggard, cast-iron, intense, introverted aspect 
which struck every beholder. 

Miss Martineau, in her Retrospect of Western Travel, has 
given us some striking and valuable glimpses of the eminent 
men of that period, particularly of the three most eminent, who 
frequently visited her during her stay in "Washington. This 
passage, for example, is highly interesting. 

" Mr. Clay sitting upright on the sofa, with his snuffbox ever in his 
hand, would discourse for many an hour in his even, soft, deUberate 
tone, on any one of the great subjects of American policy which we 
might happen to start, always amazing us with the moderation of esti- 
mate and speech which so impetuous a nature has been able to attain. 
Mr. Webster, leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking jokes, 
shaking the sofa with burst after burst of laughter, or smoothly dis- 
coursing to the perfect felicity of the logical part of one's constitution, 
would illuminate an evening now and then. Mr. Calhoun, the cast- 
iron man, who looks as if he had never been born and could never be 
7* 



154 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

extinguished, would come in sometimes to keep our understandings on 
a painful stretch for a shoi't while, and leave us to take to pieces his 
close, rapid, theoretical, illustrated talk, and see what we could make 
of it. We found it usually more worth retaining as a curiosity, than 
as either very just or useful. His speech abounds in figures, truly illus- 
trative, if that which they illustrate wei-e true also. But his theories 
of government (almost the only subject upon which his thoughts are 
employed), the squarest and compactest that ever were made, are com- 
posed out of limited elements, and are not, therefore, likely to stand 
service very well. It is at first extremely interesting to hear Mr. 
Calhoun talk ; and there is a never-failing evidence of power in all 
that he says and does, which commands intellectual reverence ; but the 
admiration is too soon turned into regret, into absolute melancholy. It 
is impossible to resist the conviction, that all this force can be at best 
but useless, and is but too likely to be very mischievous. His mind 
has long lost all power of communicating with any other. I know of no 
man who lives in such utter intellectual solitude. He meets men and 
harangues by the fireside as in the Senate ; he is wrought like a piece 
of machinery, set going vehemently by a weight, and stops while you 
answer ; he either passes by what you say, or twists it into a suitability 
with what is in his head, and begins to lecture again. Of course, a 
mind like this can have little influence in the Senate, except by virtue, 
perpetually wearing out, of what it did in its less eccentric days ; but 
its influence at home is to be dreaded. There is no hope that an intel- 
lect so cast in narrow theories will accommodate itself to varying cir- 
cumstances ; and there is every danger that it will break up all that it 
can in order to remould the materials in its own way. Mr. Calhoun 
is as full as ever of his Nullification doctrines ; and those who know 
the force that is in him, and his utter incapacity of modification by 
other minds, (after having gone through as remarkable a revolution 
of political opinion as perhaps any man ever experienced,) will no 
more expect repose and self-retention from him than from a volcano 
in full force. Relaxation is no longer in the power of his will. I never 
saw any one who so completely gave me the idea of possession. Half 
an hour's conversation with him is enough to make a necessitai-ian of 
anybody. Accordingly, he is more complained of than blamed by his 
enemies. His moments of softness by his family, and when recurring 
to old college days, are hailed by all as a rehef to the vehement work- 
ing of the intellectual machine, — a relief equally to himself and others. 
These moments are as touching to the observer as tears on the face of 
a soldier." 



JOHN C. CALUOUN. 155 

Of his appearance in the Senate, and of his manner of speak- 
ing, Miss Martineau records her impressions also : — 

" Mr. Calhoun's countenance first fixed my attention ; the splendid 
eye, the straight forehead, surmounted by a load of stiff, ujiright, dark 
hair, the stern brow, the inflexible mouth, — it is one of the most re- 
markable heads in the country." 

" Mr. Calhoun followed, and impressed me very strongly. While 
he kept to the question, what he said was close, good, and moderate, 
though delivered in rapid speech, and with a voice not sufficiently 
modulated. But when he began to reply to a taunt of Colonel Ben- 
ton's, that he wanted to be President, the force of his speaking became 
painful. He made protestations which it seemed to strangers had 
better have been spared, ' that he would not turn on his heel to be 
President,' and that ' he had given up all for his own brave, magnan- 
imous little State of South Carolina.' While thus protesting, his eyes 
flashed, his brow seemed charged with thunder, his voice became almost 
a bark, and his sentences were abrupt, intense, producing in the audi- 
tory a sort of laugh which is squeezed out of people by the application 
of a very sudden mental force. I believe he knew not what a revela- 
tion he made in a few sentences. They were to us strancjers the keijj 
not only to all that was said and done by the South Carolina party dur- 
ing the remainder of the session, but to many things at Charleston and 
Columbia tchich luould otherwise have passed unobserved and unex- 
plained." 

This intelligent observer saw the chieftain on his native 
heath : — 

" During my stay in Charleston, Mr. Calhoun and his family arrived 
from Congress, and there was something very striking in the welcome 
he received, like that of a chief returned to the bosom of his clan. 
He stalked about like a monarch of the little domain, and there was 
certainly an air of mysterious understanding between him and his 
followers." 

What Miss Martineau says of the impossibility of Calhoun's 
mind communicating with another mind, is confirmed by an anec- 
dote which we have heard related by Dr. Francis Lieber, who, 
as Professor in the College of South Carolina, was for several 
years the neighbor and intimate acquaintance of Mr. Calhoun. 
The learned Professor, upon his return from a visit to Europe, 



156 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

called upon him, and in the course of the interview Mr. Calhoun 
declared, in his positive manner, that the slaves in the Southern 
States were better lodged, fed, and cared for than the mechanics 
of Europe. Dr. Lieber, being fresh from that continent, assured 
the Secretary of State that such was not the fact, as he could 
testify from having resided in both lands. " Not at all, not at 
all," cried Calhoun dogmaticallj^, and repeated his wild assertion. 
The Doctor saw that the poor man had reached the condition of 
absolute unteachableness, and dropped the subject. There could 
not well be a more competent witness on the point in dispute 
than Dr. Lieber ; for, besides having long resided in both conti- 
nents, it was the habit and business of his life to observe and 
ponder the effect of institutions upon the welfare of those who 
live under them. Calhoun pushed him out of the witness-box, 
as though he were an idiot. 

A survey of the last fifteen years of Calhoun's life discloses 
nothing upon which the mind can dwell with complacency. On 
the approach of every Presidential election, we see him making 
what we can only call a grab at a nomination, by springing upon 
the country some unexpected issue designed to make the South a 
unit in his support. From 1830 to 1836, he exhausted all the 
petty arts of the politician to defeat General Jackson's resolve to 
bring in Mr. Van Buren as his successor ; and when all had 
failed, he made an abortive attempt to precipitate the question of 
the annexation of Texas. This, too, being foiled, Mr. Van 
Buren was elected President. Then Mr. Calhoun, who had for 
ten years never spoken of Van Buren except with contempt, 
formed the notable scheme of winning over the President so far 
as to secure his support for the succession. He advocated all the 
test measures of Mr. Van Buren's administration, and finished 
by courting a personal reconciliation with the man whom he had 
a hundred times styled a fox and a political prostitute. This 
desisn comin"; to nauo;ht, through the failure of Mr. Van Buren 
to reach a second term, he made a wild rush for the prize by 
again thrusting forward the Texas question. Colonel Benton, 
who was the predetermined heir of Van Buren, has detailed the 
manner in which this was done in a very curious chapter of 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 157 

his " Thirty Years." The plot was successful, so far as plunging 
the country into a needless war was concerned ; but it was Polk 
and Taylor, not Calhoun, who obtained the Presidency through 
it. Mr. Calhoun's struggles for a nomination in 1844 were truly 
pitiable, but they were not known to the public, who saw him, at 
a certain stage of the campaign, affecting to decline a nomination 
which there was not the slightest danger of his receiving. 

We regret that we have not space to show how much the agi- 
tation of the slavery question, from 1835 to 1850, was the work 
of this one man. The labors of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Wendell 
Phillips might have box'ne no fruit during their lifetime, if Cal- 
houn had not made it his business to supply them with material. 
"I mean io force the issue upon the North," he once wrote; and 
he did force it. On his return to South Carolina after the termi- 
nation of the Nullification troubles, he said to his friends there, 
(so avers Colonel Benton, ''Thirty Years," Vol. II. p. 786,) 
" that the South could never be united against the North on the 
tariff question ; that the sugar interest of Louisiana would keep 
her out ; and that the basis of Southern union must be shifted to 
the slave question." Here we have the key to the mysteries of all 
his subsequent career. The denial of the right of petition, the 
annexation of Texas, the forcing of slavery into the Territories, 
— these were among the issues upon which he hoped to unite the 
South in his favor, while retaining enousrh strength at the North 
to secure his election. Failing in all his schemes of personal 
advancement, he died in 1850, still protesting that slavery is 
divine, and that it must rule this country or ruin it. This is 
really the sum and substance of that last speech to the Senate, 
which he had not strength enough left to deliver. 

We have run rapidly over Mr. Calhoun's career as a public 
man. It remains for us to notice his claims as a teacher of polit- 
ical philosophy, a character in which he influenced his country- 
men more powerfully after he was in his grave than he did while 
living among them. 

The work upon which his reputation as a thinker will rest with 
posterity is his Treatise on the Nature of Government. Writ- 
ten in the last year of his life, when at length all hope of further 



158 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

personal advancement must have died within hira, it may be 
taken as the deliberate record or summary of his poHtical opin- 
ions. He did not live to revise it, and the concluding portion he 
evidently meant to enlarge and illustrate, as was ascertained from 
notes and memoranda in pencil upon the manuscript. After the 
death of the author in 1850, the work was published in a sub- 
stantial and elegant form by the Legislature of South Carolina, 
who ordered copies to be presented to individuals of note in 
science and literature, and to public libraries. We are, there- 
fore, to regard this volume, not merely as a legacy of Mr. Cal- 
houn to his countrymen, but as conveying to us the sentiments 
of South Carolina with regard to her rights and duties as a mem- 
ber of the Union. Events since its publication have shown us 
that it is more even than this. The assemblage of troublesome 
communities which we have been accustomed to style " the 
South," adopted this work as their political gospel. From this 
source the politicians of the Southern States have drawn all they 
have chosen to present to the world in justification of their course 
which bears the semblance of argument ; for, in truth, Mr. Cal- 
houn, since Jefferson and iMadison passed from the stage, is al- 
most the only thinking being the South has had. His was a very 
narrow, intense, and untrustworthy mind, but he was an angel of 
light compared with the men who have been recently conspicuous 
in the Southern States. 

This treatise on government belongs to the same class of works 
as Louis Napoleon's Life of CsBsar, having for its principal object 
one that lies below the surface, and the effect of both is damaged 
by the name on the title-page. The moment we learn that Louis 
Napoleon wrote that Life of Ca;sar, the mind is intent upon dis- 
covering allusions to recent history, Mdiich the author has an 
interest in misrepresenting. The common conscience of mankind 
condemns him as a perjured usurper, and the murderer of many 
of his unoffending fellow-citizens. No man, whatever the power 
and splendor of his position, can rest content under the scorn of 
mankind, unless his own conscience gives him a clear acquittal, 
and assures him that one day the verdict of his fellow-men will 
be reversed ; and even in that case, it is not every man that can 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 150 

possess his soul in patience. Every page of the Life of Caesar 
was composed with a secret, perhaps half-unconscious reference 
to that view of Louis Napoleon's conduct whicli is expressed with 
such deadly power in Mr. Kinglake's History of the Crimean 
"War, and which is so remarkably confirmed by an American 
eyewitness, the late Mr. Goodrich, who was Consul at Paris in 
1848. Published anonymously, the Life of Ccesar might have 
had some effect. Given to the world by Napoleon IIL, every 
one reads it as he would a defence by an ingenious criminal of 
his own cause. The highest praise that can be bestowed upon it 
is, that it is very well done, considering the object the author had 
in view. 

So, in reading Mr. Calhoun's disquisition upon government, 
we are constantly reminded that the author was a man who had 
only escaped trial and execution for treason by suddenly arrest- 
ing the treasonable measures which he had caused to be set on 
foot. Though it contains but one allusion to events in South 
Carolina in 1833, the work is nothing but a labored, refined jus- 
tification of those events. It has been even coupled with Ed- 
wai*ds on the Will, as the two best examples of subtle reasoning 
v/hich American literature contains. Admit his premises, and 
you are borne along, at a steady pace, in a straight path, to the 
final inferences : that the sovereign State of South Carolina pos- 
sesses, by the Constitution of the United States, an absolute veto 
upon every act of Congress, and may secede from the Union 
whenever she likes ; and that these rights of veto and secession 
do not merely constitute the strength of the Constitution, but are 
the Constitution, — and do not merely tend to perpetuate the 
Union, but are the Union's self, — the thing that binds the States 
together. 

Mr. Calhoun begins his ti-eatise by assuming that government 
is necessary. He then explains why it is necessary. It is neces- 
sary because man is more selfish than sympathetic, feeling more 
intensely what affects himself than what affects others. Hence 
he will encroach on the rights of others ; and to prevent this, 
government is indispensable. 

But government, since it must be administered by selfish men, 



160 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

will feel more intensely what affects itself than what affects the 
people governed. It is, therefore, the tendency of all govern- 
ments to encroach on the rights of the people ; and they certainly 
will do so, if they can. The same instinct of self-preservation, 
the same love of accumulation, which tempts individuals to over- 
reach their neighbors, inclines government to preserve, increase, 
and consolidate its powers. Therefore, as individual selfishness 
requires to be held in check by government, so government must 
be restrained by something. 

This something is the constitution, written or unwritten. A 
constitution is to the government what government is to the 
people : it is the restraint upon its selfishness. Mr. Calhoun 
assumes here that the relation between government and gov- 
erned is naturally and inevitably " antagonistic." He does 
not perceive that government is the expression of man's love 
of justice, and the means by which the people cause justice to be 
done. 

Government, he continues, must be powerful ; must have at 
command the resources of the country; must be so strong that 
it can, if it will, disregard the limitations of the constitution. 
The question is. How to compel a government, holding such 
powers, having an army, a navy, and a national treasury at 
command, to obey the requirements of a mere piece of printed 
paper ? 

Power, says Mr. Calhoun, can only be resisted by power. 
Therefore, a proper constitution must leave to the governed the 
'power to resist encroachments. This is done in free countries 
by universal suffrage and the election of rulers at frequent and 
fixed periods. This gives to rulers the strongest possible motive 
to please the people, which can only be done by executing theii 
will. 

So far, most readers will follow the author without serious dif- 
ficulty. But now we come to passages which no one could un- 
derstand who was not acquainted with the Nullification imbroglio 
of 1833. A philosophic Frenchman or German, who should read 
this work with a view to enlightening his mind upon the nature 
of government, would be much puzzled after passing the thir- 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 161' 

teenth page ; for at that point the hidden loadstone begins to op- 
erate upon the needle of Mr. Calhoun's compass, and he is as 
Louis Napoleon writing the Life of Caesar. 

Universal suffrage, he continues, and the frequent election of 
rulers, are indeed the primary and fundamental principles of a 
constitutional government ; and they are sufficient to give the 
people an effective control over those whom they have elected. 
But this is all they can do. They cannot make rulers good, or 
just, or obedient to the constitution, but only faithful representa- 
tives of the majority of the people and executors of the will of 
that majority. The right of suffrage transfers the supreme au- 
thority from the rulers to the body of the community, and the 
more perfectly it does this, the more perfectly it accompUshes its 
object. Majority is king. But this king, too, like all others, is 
selfish, and will abuse his power if he can. 

So, we have been arguing in a circle, and have come back to 
the starting-point. Government keeps within bounds the selfish- 
ness of the people ; the constitution restrains the selfishness of the 
government ; but, in doing so, it has only created a despot as 
much to be dreaded as the power it displaced. "We are still, 
therefore, confronted by the original difficulty. How are we to 
limit the sway of tyrant Majority ? 

If, says Mr. Calhoun, all the people had the same interests, so 
that a law which oppressed one interest would oppress all inter- 
ests,- then the right of suffrage would itself be sufficient ; and the 
only question would be as to the fitness of different candidates. 
But this is not the case. Taxation, for example : no system of 
taxation can be arranged that wiU not bear oppressively upon 
some interests or section. Disbursements, also : some portions 
of the country must receive back, in the form of governmental 
disbursements, more money than they pay in taxes, and others 
less ; and this may be carried so far, that one region may be ut- 
terly impoverished, while others are enriched. King Majority 
may have his favorites. He may now choose to favor agriculture ; 
now, commerce ; now, manufactures ; and so arrange the imports 
as to crush one for the sake of promoting the others. " Crush " 
is Mr. Calhoun's word. " One portion of the community," he 

K 



162 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

says, "may be crushed, and another elevated on its ruins, by 
systematically perverting the power of taxation and disbursement, 
for the purpose of aggrandizing or building up one portion of the 
community at the expense of the other." May be. But has not 
the most relentless despot an interest in the prosperity of his 
subjects ? And can one interest be crushed v^^ithout manifest 
and immediate injury to all the others? Mr. Calhoun says: 
That this fell power to crush important interests will be used, is 
exactly as certain as that it can be. 

All this would be unintelligible to our foreign philosopher, but 
American citizens know very well Avhat it means. Through this 
fine lattice-work fence they discern the shining countenance of 
the colored person. 

But now, what remedy ? Mr. Calhoun approaches this part 
of the subject with the due acknowledgment of its difficulty. 
The remedy, of course, is Nullification ; but he is far from using 
a word so familiar. There is but one mode, he remarks, by 
which the majority of the whole people can be prevented from 
oppressing the minority, or portions of the minority, and that is 
this : " By taking the sense of each interest or portion of the 
community, which may be unequally and injuriously affected by 
the action of the government, separately, through its own major- 
ity, or in some other way by which its voice can be expressed ; 
and to require the consent of each interest, either to put or to 
keep the government in motion." And this can only be done by 
such an " organism " as will " give to each division or interest 
either a concurrent voice in making and executing the laws or a 
veto on their execution." 

This is perfectly intelligible when read by the light of the 
history of 1833. But no human being unacquainted with that 
history could gather Mr. Calhoun's meaning. Our studious 
foreigner would suppose by the word " interest," that the author 
meant the manufacturing interest, the commercial and agricultu- 
ral interests, and that each of these should have its little congress 
concurring in or vetoing the acts of the Congress sitting at 
Washington. We, however, know that Mr. Calhoun meant that 
South Carolina should have the power to nullify acta of Congres? 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 163 

and wive law to the Union. He does not tell us how South 
Carolina's tyrant Majority is to be kept within bounds ; but only 
how that majority is to control the majority of the whole countr3% 
He has driven his problem into a corner, and there he leaves it. 

Having thus arrived at the conclusion, that a law, to be binding 
on all " interests," i. e. on all the States of the Union, must be 
concurred in by all, he proceeds to answer the obvious objection, 
that " interests " so antagonistic could never be brought to unani- 
mous agreement. He thinks this would present no difficulty, 
and adduces some instances of unanimity to illustrate his point. 

First, trial by jury. Here are twelve men, of diiFerent char- 
acter and calibre, shut up in a room to agree upon a verdict, in 
a cause upon which able men have argued upon opposite sides. 
How unlikely that they should be able to agree unanimously ! 
Yet they generally do, and that speedily. Why is this? Be- 
cause, answers Mr. Calhoun, they go into their room knowing 
that nothing short of unanimity will answer ; and consequently 
every man is disposed to agree with his fellows, and, if he cannot 
agree, to compromise. " Not at all." The chief reason why 
juries generally agree is, that they are not interested in the 
matter in dispute. The law of justice is so plainly written in the 
human heart, that the fair thing is usually obvious to disinterested 
minds, or can be made so. It is interest, it is rivalry, that blinds 
us to what is right; and Mr. Calhoun's problem is to render 
"antagonistic" interests unanimous. "We cannot, therefore, ac- 
cept this illustration as a case in point. 

Secondly, Poland. Poland is not the country which an 
American would naturally visit to gain political wisdom. Mr. 
Calhoun, however, repairs thither, and brings home the fact, that 
in the turbulent Diet of that unhappy kingdom every member 
had an absolute veto upon every measure. Nay, more : no king 
could be elected without the unanimous vote of an assembly of 
one hundred and fifty thousand persons. Yet Poland lasted two 
centuries! The history of those two centuries is a sufficient 
comment upon Mr Calhoun's system, to say nothing of the final 
catastrophe, which Mr. Callioun confesses was owing to "the 
extreme to which the principle was carried." A sound principle 



164 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

cannot be carried to an unsafe extreme ; it is impossible for a 
man to be too right. If it is right for South Carolina to control 
and nullify the United States, it is right for any one man in South 
Carolina to control and nullify South Carolina. One of the tests 
of a system is to ascertain where it will carry us if it is pushed 
to the uttermost extreme. Mr. Calhoun gave his countrymen 
this valuable information when he cited the lamentable case of 
Poland. 

From Poland the author descends to the Six Nations, the fed- 
eral council of which was composed of forty-two members, each 
of whom had an absolute veto upon every measure. Neverthe- 
less, this confederacy, he says, became the most powerful and the 
most united of all the Indian nations. He omits to add, that it 
was the facility with which this council could be wielded by the 
French and English in turn, that hastened the grinding of the 
Six Nations to pieces between those two millstones. 

Rome is Mr. Calhoun's next illustration. The Tribunus 
Plebis, he observes, had a veto upon the passage of all laws and 
upon the execution of all laws, and thus prevented the oppression 
of the plebeians by the patricians. To show the inapplicability of 
this example to the principle in question, to show by what steps 
this tribunal, long useful and efficient, gradually absorbed the 
power of the government, and became itself, first oppressive, and 
then an instrument in the overthrow of the constitution, would 
be to write a history of Rome. Niebuhr is accessible to the pub- 
lic, and Niebuhr knew more of the Tribunus Plebis than Mr. 
Calhoun. We cannot find in Niebuhr anything to justify the 
author's aim to constitute patrician Carolina the Tribunus Plebis 
of the United States. 

Lastly, England. England, too, has that safeguard of liberty, 
" an organism by which the voice of each order or class is taken 
through its appropriate organ, and which requires the concurring 
voice of all to constitute that of the whole community." These 
orders are King, Lords, and Commons. They must all concur 
in every law, each having a veto upon the action of the two 
others. The government of the United States is also so arranged 
that the President and the two Houses of Congress must concur 



I 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 165 

in every enactment ; but then they all represent the same order 
or interest, the people of the United States. The English gov- 
ernment, says Mr. Calhoun, is so exquisitely constituted, that the 
greater the revenues of the government, the more stable it is ; 
because those revenues, being chiefly expended upon the lords 
and gentlemen, render them exceedingly averse to any radical 
change. Mr. Calhoun does not mention that the majority of the 
people of England are not represented in the government at all. 
Perhaps, however, the following passage, in a previous part of 
the work, was designed to meet their case: — 

" It is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are 
equally entitled to liberty. It is a reward to be earned, not a blessing 
to be gratuitously lavished on all alike ; — a reward reserved for the 
intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous, and deserving ; and not a boon 
to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded, and vicious to be 
capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it." 

Mr. Calhoun does not tell us who is to bestow this precious 
boon. He afterwards remarks, that the progress of a people 
" rising " to the point of civilization which entitles them to free- 
dom, is " necessarily slow." How very slow, then, it must be, 
when the means of civilization are forbidden to them by law ! 

With his remarks upon England, Mr. Calhoun terminates his 
discussion of the theory of government. Let us grant all that he 
claims for it, and see to what it conducts us. Observe that his 
grand position is, that a " numerical majority," like all other sov- 
ereign powers, will certainly tyrannize if it can. His remedy for 
this is, that a local majority, the majority of each State, shall 
have a veto upon the acts of the majority of the whole country, 
l^ut he omits to tell us how that local majority is to be kept within 
bounds. According to his reasoning. South Carolina should have 
a veto upon acts of Congress. Very well ; then each county of 
South Carolina should have a veto upon the acts of the State 
Legislature ; each town should have a veto upon the behests of 
the county ; and each voter upon the decisions of the town. Mr. 
Calhoun's argument, therefore, amounts to this : that one voter 
in South Carolina should have the constitutional right to nullify 



166 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

an act of Congress, and no law should be binding which has not 
received the assent of every citizen. 

Having completed the theoretical part of his subject, the author 
proceeds to the practical. In his first essay he describes the 
" organism " that is requisite for the preservation of liberty ; and 
in his second, he endeavors to show that the United States is 
precisely such an organism, since the Constitution, rightly inter- 
preted, does confer upon South Carolina the right to veto the de- 
crees of the numerical majority. Mr. Calhoun's understanding 
appears to much better advantage in this second discourse, which 
contains the substance of all his numerous speeches on nullifica- 
tion. It is marvellous how this morbid and intense mind had 
brooded over a single subject, and how it had subjugated all his- 
tory and all law to its single purpose. But we cannot follow Mr. 
Calhoun through the tortuous mazes of his second essay ; nor, if 
we could, should we be able to draw readers after us. We can 
only say this : Let it begranted that there are two ways in which 
the Constitution can be fairly interpreted ; — one, the Websterian 
method ; the other, that of Mr. Calhoun. On one of these inter- 
pretations the Constitution will work, and on the other it will 
not. We prefer the interpretation that is practicable, and leave 
the other party to the enjoyment of their argument. Nations 
cannot be governed upon principles so recondite and refined, that 
not one citizen in a hundred will so much as follow a mere state- 
ment of them. The' fundamental law must be as plain as the ten 
commandments, — as plain as the four celebrated propositions in 
which Mr. Webster put the substance of his speeches in reply to 
Mr. Calhoun's ingenious defence of his conduct in 1833. 

The author concludes his essay by a prophetic glance at the 
future. He remarks, that with regard to the future of the 
United States, as then governed, only one thing could be pre- 
dicted with absolute certainty, and that was, that the Republic 
could not last. It might lapse into a monarchy, or it might be 
dismembered, — no man could say which ; but that one of these 
things would happen was entirely certain. The rotation-in-office 
system, as introduced by General Jackson, and sanctioned by his 
subservient Congress, had rendered the Presidential office a prize 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 167 

SO tempting, in which so large a number of men had an interest, 
that the contest would gradually cease to be elective, and would 
finally lose the elective form. The incumbent would appoint his 
successor ; and " thus the absolute form of a popular, would end 
in the absolute form of a monarchical government," and there 
would be no possibility of even rendering the monarchy limited 
or constitutional. Mi'. Calhoun does not mention here the name 
of General Jackson or of Martin Van Buren, but American 
readers know very well what he was thinking of when he wrote 
the passage. 

Disunion, according to Mr. Calhoun, was another of our perils. 
In view of recent events, our readers may be interested in read- 
ing his remarks on this subject, written in 1849, among the last 
words he ever deliberately put upon paper : — 

" The conditions impelling the government toward disunion are very 
powerful. They consist chiefly of two ; — the one arising from the 
great extent of tho country ; the other, from its division into separate 
States, having local institutions and interests. The former, under the 
operation of the numerical majority, has necessarily given to the two 
great parties, in their contest for the honors and emoluments of the 
government, a geographical character, for reasons which have been 
fully stated. This contest must finally settle down into a struggle on 
the part of the stronger section to obtain the permanent control ; and 
on the part of the weaker, to preserve its independence and equality 
as members of the Union. The conflict will thus become one between 
the States occupying the different sections, — that is, between organ- 
ized bodies on both sides, — each, in the event of separation, having 
the means of avoiding the confusion and anarchy to which the \)?ivts 
would be subject without such organization. This would contribute 
much to increase the power of resistance on the part of the weaker sec- 
tion against the stronger in possession of the government. With these 
great advantages and resources, it is hardly possible that the parties 
occupying the weaker section would consent quietly, under any circum- 
stances, to break down from independent and equal sovereignties into 
a dependent and colonial condition ; and still less so, under circum- 
stances that would revolutionize them internally, and put their very 
existence as a people at stake. Never was there an issue between 
independent States that involved greater calamity to the conquered, 
than is involved in that between the States which compose the two 



168 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

sections of the Union. The condition of the weaker, should it sink 
from a state of independence and equality to one of dependence and 
subjection, would be more calamitous than ever before befell a civilized 
people. It is vain to think that, with such consequences before them, 
they will not resist ; especially, when resistance may save them, and 
cannot render their condition worse. That this will take place, unless 
the stronger section desists from its course, may be assumed as certain ; 
and that, If forced to resist, the weaker section would prove successful, 
and the system end in disunion, is, to say the least, highly probable. 
But if it should fail, the great increase of power and patronage which 
must, in consequence, accrue to the government of the United States, 
would but render certain and hasten the termination in the other al- 
ternative. So that, at all events, to the one or to the other — to mon- 
archy or disunion — it must come, if not prevented by strenuous or 
timely efforts." 

This is a very instructive passage, and one that shows vfeW the 
complexity of human motives. Mr. Calhoun betrays the secret 
that, after all, the contest between the two sections is a " contest 
for the honors and emoluments of the government," and that all 
the rest is but pretext and afterthought, — as General Jackson 
said it was. He plainly states that the policy of the South is 
rule or ruin. Besides this, he intimates that there is in the Unit- 
ed States an "interest," an institution, the development of which 
is incompatible with the advancement of the general interest ; 
and either that one interest must overshadow and subdue all other 
interests, or all other interests must unite to crush that one. The 
latter has been done. 

Mr. Calhoun proceeds to suggest the measures by which these 
calamities can be averted. The government must be " restored 
to its federal character " by the repeal of all laws tending to the 
annihilation of State sovereignty, and by a strict construction of 
the Constitution. The President's power of removal must be 
limited. In earlier times, these would have sufficed ; but at that 
day the nature of the disease was such that nothing could reach it 
short of an organic change, which should give the weaker section 
a negative on the action of the government. Mr. Calhoun was 
of opinion that this could best be done by our having two Presi- 
dents, — one elected by the North and the other by the South, — 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 169 

the assent of both to be necessary to every act of Congress. Un- 
der such a system, he thought, — 

" The Presidential election, instead of dividing the Union into hos- 
tile geographical parties, the stronger struggling to enlarge its powers, 
and the weaker to defend its rights, as is now the case, would become 
the means of restoring harmony and concord to the country and the 
government. It would make the Union a union in truth, — a bond 
of mutual affection and brotherhood ; and not a mere connection used 
by the stronger as the instrument of dominion and aggrandizement, 
and submitted to by the weaker only from the lingering remains 
of former attachment, and the fading hope of being able to restore 
the government to what it was originally intended to be, — a blessing 
to aU." 

The utter misapprehension of the purposes and desires of the 
Northern people which this passage betrays, and which pervades 
all the later writings of Mr. Calhoun, can only be explained by 
the supposition that he judged them out of his own heart. It is 
astounding to hear the author of the annexation of Texas charg- 
ing the North wuth the lust of dominion, and the great NuUifier 
accusing Northern statesmen of being wholly possessed by the 
mania to be President. 

Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, — these were great names in their 
day. When the last of them had departed, the country felt a 
sense of bereavement, and even of self-distrust, doubting if ever 
again such men would adorn the public councils. A close scru- 
tiny into the lives of either of them would, of course, compel us to 
deduct something from his contemporary renown, for they were 
all, in some degree, at some periods, diverted from their true path 
by an ambition beneath an American statesman, whose true glory 
alone consists in serving his country well in that sphere to which 
his fellow-citizens call him. From such a scrutiny the fame of 
neither of those distinsruished men would suffer so much as that 
of Calhoun. His endowments were not great, nor of the most val- 
up,ble kind ; and his early education, hasty and very incomplete, was 
not continued by maturer study. He read rather to confirm his 
impressions than to correct them. It was impossible that he 
should ever have been wise, because he refused to admit his lia- 
8 



170 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

bility to error. Never was mental assurance more complete, and 
seldom less warranted by innate or acquired superiority. If his 
knowledge of books was slight, his opportunities of observing men 
were still more limited, since he passed his whole life in places as 
exceptional, perhaps, as any in the world, — Washington and 
South Carolina. From the beginning of his public career there 
was a canker in the heart of it ; for, while his oath, as a member 
of Congress, to support the Constitution of the United States, was 
still fresh upon his lips, he declared that his attachment to the 
Union was conditional and subordinate. He said that the alliance 
between the Southern planters and Northern Democrats was a 
false and calculated compact, to be broken when the planters 
could no longer rule by it. While he resided in Washington, and 
acted with the Republican party in the flush of its double triumph, 
he appeared a respectable character, and won golden opinions 
from eminent men in both parties. But when he was again sub- 
jected to the narrowing and perverting influence of a residence 
in South Carolina, he shrunk at once to his original proportions, 
and became thenceforth, not the servant of his country, but the 
special pleader of a class and the representative of a section. 
And yet, with that strange judicial blindness which has ever been 
the doom of the defenders of wrong, he still hoped to attain the 
Presidency. There is scarcely any example of infatuation more 
remarkable than this. Here we have, lying befoi'e us at this mo- 
ment, undeniable proofs, in the form of " campaign lives " and 
" campaign documents," that, as late as 1844 there was money 
spent and labor done for the purpose of placing him in nomina- 
tion for the highest office. 

Calhoun failed in all the leading objects of his public life, 
except one ; but in that one his success will be memorable for- 
ever. He has left it on record (see Benton, II. 698) that his 
great aim, from 1835 to 1847, was to force the slavery issue on 
the North. "It is our duty," he wrote in 1847, " to force the 
issue on the North." " Had the South," he continued, " or evqn 
my own State, backed me, I would have forced the issue on the 
North in 1835 " ; and he welcomed the Wilmot Proviso in 1847, 
because, as he privately wrote, it would be the means of " ena- 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 171 

bling us to force the issue on the North." In this design, at 
length, when he had been ten years in the grave, he succeeded. 
Had there been no Calhoun, it is possible — nay, it is not im- 
probable — that that issue might have been deferred till the 
North had so outstripped the South in accumulating all the ele- 
ments of power, that the fire-eaters themselves would have shrunlt 
fx'om submitting the question to the arbitrament of the sword. It 
was Calhoun who forced the issue upon the United States, and 
compelled us to choose between annihilation and war. 



JOHN RANDOLPH 



I 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 



N June, 1861, Dr. Russell, the correspondent of the London 
Times, was ascending the Mississippi in a steamboat, on board 
of which was a body of Confederate troops, several of whom were 
sick, and lay along the deck helpless. Being an old campaigner, 
he had his medicine-chest with him, and he was thus enabled to 
administer to these men the medicines which he supposed their 
cases required. One huge fellow, attenuated to a skeleton by 
dysentery, who appears to have been aware of his benefactor's 
connection with the press, gasped out these words : " Stranger, 
remember, if I die, that I am Robert Tallon of Tishimingo 
County, and that I died for States' Rights. See, now, they put 
that in the papers, won't you ? Robert Tallon died for States' 
Rights." Having thus spoken, he turned over on his blanket, 
and was silent. Dr. Russell assures his readers that this man 
only expressed the nearly unanimous feeling of the Southern 
people at the outbreak of the war. He had been ten weeks 
travelling in the Southern States, and he declared that the people 
had but one battle-cry, — " States' Rights, and death to those who 
make war upon them ! " About the same time, we remember, 
there was a paragraph going the rounds of the newspapers which 
related a conversation said to have taken place between a 
Northern man and a Southern boy. The boy happening to use 
the word " country," the Northerner asked him, " What is your 
country ? " To which the boy instantly and haughtily replied, 
" South Carolina ! " 

Such anecdotes as these were to most of us here at the North 
a revelation. The majority of the Northern people actually did 
not know of the existence of such a feeling as that expressed by 



176 JOHN EANDOLPH. 

the Carolina boy, nor of the doctrine enunciated by the dying 
soldier. If every boy in the Northern States old enough to un- 
derstand the question had been asked, What is your country ? 
every one of them, without a moment's hesitation, would have 
quietly answered in substance thus : " Why, the United States, of 
course " ; — and the only feeling excited by the question would 
have been one of surprise that it should have been asked. And 
with regard to that " battle-cry " of States' Rights, seven tenths 
of the voters of the North hardly knew what a Southern man 
meant when he pronounced the words. Thus we presented to 
the world the curious spectacle of a people so ignorant of one 
another, so little homogeneous, that nearly all on one side of au 
imaginary line were willing to risk their lives for an idea which 
the inhabitants on the other side of the line not only did not 
entertain, but knew nothing about. We observe something simi- 
lar in the British empire. The ordinai'y Englishman does not 
know what it is of which Ireland complains, and if an Irishman 
is asked the name of his country, he does not pronounce any of 
the names which imply the merging of his native isle in the 
realm of Britain. 

Few of us, even now, have a " realizing sense," as it is called, 
of the strength of the States' Rights feeling among the Southern 
people. Of all the Southern States in which we ever sojourned, 
the one that seemed to us most like a Northern State was North 
Carolina. We stayed some time at Raleigh, ten years ago, 
during the session of the Legislature, and we were struck with 
the large number of reasonable, intelligent, upright men who 
were members of that body. Of coui'se, we expected to find 
Southern men all mad on one topic ; but in the Legislature of 
North Carolina there were several individuals who could con- 
verse even on that in a rational and comfortable manner. We 
were a little surprised, therefore, the other day, to pick up at a 
book-stall in Nassau Street a work entitled : " The North Caro- 
lina Reader, Number III. Prepared with Special Reference to 
the Wants and Interests of North CaroUna. Under the Auspices 
of the Superintendent of Common Schools. Containing Selec- 
tions in Prose and Verse. By C. H. Wiley. New York : A. S. 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 177 

Barnes and Burr." The acute reader will at once surmise that 
the object of this series of school readers was to instil into the 
minds of the youth of North Carolina a due regard for the 
sacredness and blessed effects of our peculiar institution. But 
for once the acute reader is mistaken. No such purpose appears, 
at least not in Number III. ; in which there are only one or two 
even distant allusions to that dread subject. Onesimus is not 
mentioned ; there is no reference to Ham, nor is there any dis- 
course upon long heels and small brains. The great, the only 
object of this Reader was to nourish in the children of the State 
the feeling which the boy expressed when he proudly said that 
his country was South Carolina. Nothing can exceed the inno- 
cent, childlike manner in which this design is carried out in Num- 
ber III. First, the children are favored with a series of chap- 
ters descriptive of North Carolina, written in the style of a 
school geography, with an occasional piece of poetry on a North 
Carolina subject by a North Carolina poet. Once, however, the 
compiler ventures to depart from his plan by inserting the lines 
by Sir "William Jones, "What constitutes a State?" To this 
poem he appends a note apologizing for " breaking the thread of 
his discourse," upon the ground that the lines were so " applicable 
to the subject," tliat it seemed as if the author " must have been 
desci'ibing North Carolina." When the compiler has done cata- 
loguing the fisheries, the rivers, the mountains, and the towns of 
North Carolina, he proceeds to relate its history precisely in the 
style of our school history books. The latter half of the volume 
is chiefly occupied by passages from speeches, and poems from 
newspapers, written by natives of North Carolina. It is impos- 
sible for us to convey an idea of the innutritiousness and the 
inferiority of most of these pieces. North Carolina is the great 
theme of orator and poet. 

" We live," says one of the legislators quoted, " in the most beautiful 
land that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. Yes, sir, I have heard 
the anecdote from Mr. Clay, that a preacher in Kentucky, when speak- 
ing of the beauties of paradise, when he desired to make his audience 
believe it was a place of bliss, said it was a Kentucky of a place. Sir, 
this preacher had never visited the western counties of North Carohna. 
8* I, 



178 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

I have spent days of rapture in looking at her scenery of unsurpassed 
grandeur, in hearing the roar of her magnificent waterfalls, second only 
to the great cataract of the North ; and while I gazed for hours, lost in 
admiration at the power of Him who by his word created such a coun- 
try, and gratitude for the blessings He had scattered upon it, I thought 
that if Adam and Eve, when driven from paradise, had been near this 
land, they would have thought themselves in the next best place to that 
they had left," 

"We do not aver that the contents of this collection are gen- 
erally as ludicrous as this specinaen ; but we do say that the pas- 
sage quoted gives a very fair idea of the spirit and quality of the 
book. There is scarcely one of the North Carolina pieces which 
a Northern man would not for one reason or another find ex- 
tremely comic. One of the reading lessons is a note written fif- 
teen years ago by Solon Robinson, the agricultural editor of the 
Tribune, upon the use of the long leaves of the North Carolina 
pine for braiding or basket-work ; another is a note written to 
accompany a bunch of North Carolina gi-apes sent to an editor ; 
and there are many other newspaper cuttings of a similar char- 
acter. The editor seems to have thought nothing too trivial, 
nothing too ephemeral, for his purpose, provided the passage 
contained the name of his beloved State. 

How strange all this appears to a Northern mind ! Every- 
where else in Christendom, teachers strive to enlarge the mental 
range of their pupils, readily assenting to Voltaire's well-known 
definition of an educated man : " One who is not satisfied to sur- 
vey the universe from his parish belfry." Everywhere else, the 
intellectual class have some sense of the ill-consequences of 
" breeding in and in," and take care to infuse into their minds the 
vigor of new ideas and the nourishment of strange knowledge. 
How impossible for a Northern State to think of doing what 
Alabama did last winter, pass a law designed to limit the circu- 
lation in that State of Northern newspapers and periodicals ! 
What Southern men mean by " State pride " is really not known 
in the Northern States. All men of every land are fond of their 
native place ; but the pride that Northern people may feel in the 
State wherein they happened to be born is as subordinate to 



JOHN KAM)OLPH. 179 

their national feeling, as the attachment of a Frenchman to his 
native province is to his pride in France. 

Why this difference ? It did not always exist. It cost New 
York and Massachusetts as severe a struggle to accept the Con- 
stitution of 1787 as it did Virginia. George Clinton, Governor 
of New York, had as much State pride as Patrick Henry, orator 
of Virginia, and parted as reluctantly with a portion of the sov- 
ereignty which he wielded. If it required Washington's influence 
and Madison's persuasive reasoning to bring Virginia into the 
new system, the repugnance of Massachusetts was only overcome 
by the combined force of Hancock's social rank and Samuel 
Adams's late, reluctant assent. 

On this subject let us hear Samuel Adams for a moment as he 
wrote to a friend in 1788 : — 

" I confess, as I enter the building I stumble at the threshold. I 
meet with a national government Instead of a federal union of sover- 
eign states. I am not able to conceive why the wisdom of the Con- 
vention led them to give the preference to the former before the latter. 
If the several States in the Union are to be one entire nation under one 
Legislature, the powers of which shall extend to every subject of leg- 
islation, and Its laws be supreme and control the whole, the idea of 
sovereignty in these States must be lost. Indeed, I think, upon such a 
supposition, those sovereignties ought to be eradicated from the mind, 
for they would be imperia in ii7iperlo, justly deemed a solecism in poli- 
tics, and they would be highly dangerous and destructive of the peace, 
union, and safety of the nation. 

" And can this National Legislature be competent to make laws for 
the free internal government of one people, living in climates so re- 
mote, and whose habits and particular interests are, and probably al- 
ways win be, so different ? Is it to be expected that general laws can 
be adapted to the feelings of the more eastern and the more southern 
parts of so extensive a nation ? It appears to me difficult, if practica- 
ble. Hence, then, may we not look for discontent, mistrust, disaffec- 
tion to government, and frequent insurrections, which will require 
standing armies to suppress them in one place and another, where they 
may happen to arise. Or, if laws could be made adapted to the local 
habits, feelings, views, and Interests of those distant parts, would they 
not cause jealousies of partiality in government, Avhich would excite 
envy and other malignant passions producti\'e of Avars and figliting ? 



180 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

But should we continue distinct sovereign States, confederated for the 
purpose of mutual safety and happiness, each contributing to the fed- 
eral head such a part of its sovereignty as would render the govern- 
ment fully adequate to those purposes and no more, the people would 
govern themselves more easily, the laws of each State being well adapt- 
ed to its own genius and circumstances, and the liberties of the United 
States would be more secure than they can be, as I humbly conceive, 
under the proposed new constitution." — Life of Samuel Adams, Vol. 

m., p. 251. 

This passage is one of the large number in the writings of that 
time to which recent events have given a new interest ; nor is it 
now without salutary meaning for us, though we quote it only to 
show the reluctance of some of the best citizens of the North to 
come into a national system. Suppose, to-day, that the United 
States were invited to merge their sovereignty into a confedera- 
tion of all the nations of America, which would require us to 
abolish the city of Washington, and send delegates to a general 
congress on the Isthmus of Darien ! A sacrifice of pride like 
that was demanded of the leading States of the Union in 1787. 
Severe was the struggle, but the sacrifice was made, and it cost 
the great States of the North as painful a throe as it did the 
great States of the South. Why, then, has State pride died 
away in the North, and grown stronger in the South ? Why is 
it only in the Southern States that the doctrine of States' Rights 
is ever heard of? Why does the Northern man swell with na- 
tional pride, and point with exultation to a flag bearing thirty- 
seven stars, feeling the remotest State to be as much his country 
as his native village, while the Southern man contracts to an ex- 
clusive love for a single State, and is willing to die on its fron- 
tiers in repelling from its sacred soil the national troops, and can 
see the flag under which his fathers fought torn down without 
regret ? 

The study of John Randolph of Virginia takes us to the heart 
of this mystery. He could not have correctly answered the 
question we have proposed, but he was an answer to it. Born 
when George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and 
James Madison were Virginia farmers, and surviving to the time 



JOHN EANDOLPH. 181 

when Andrew Jackson was President of the United States, he 
hved through the period of the decline of his race, and he was of 
that decline a conscious exemplification. He represented the 
decay of Virginia, himself a living ruin attesting by the strength 
and splendor of portions of it what a magnificent structure it was 
once. "Poor old Virsinia! Poor old Virginia!" This was 
the burden of his cry for many a year. Sick, solitary, and half 
mad, at his lonely house in the wilderness of Roanoke, suffering 
from inherited disease, burdened with inherited debt, limited by 
inherited errors, and severed by a wall of inherited prejudice 
from the life of the modern world, he stands to us as the type of 
the palsied and dying State. Of the doctrine of States' Rights 
he was the most consistent and persistent champion ; while of 
that feeling which the North Carolina Reader No. III. styles 
" State pride," we may call him the very incarnation. " When I 
speak of my country," he would say, " I mean the Commonwealth 
of Virginia." He was the first eminent man in the Southern 
States who was prepared in spirit for war against the government 
of the United States ; for during the Nullification imbroglio of 
1833, he not only was in the fullest accord with Calhoun, but he 
used to say, that, if a collision took place between the nullifiers 
and the forces of the United States, he, John Randolph of Roan- 
oke, old and sick as he was, would have himself buckled on his 
horse, Radical, and fight for the South to liis last breath. 

But then he was a man of genius, travel, and reading. "We 
find him, therefore, as we have said, a conscious witness of his 
Virginia's decline. Along with a pride in the Old Dominion 
that was fanatical, there was in this man's heart a constant and 
most agonizing sense of her inferiority to lands less beloved. By 
no tongue or pen — not by Sumner's tongue nor Olmstead's pen 
— have more terrible pictures been drawn of Virginia's lapse 
into barbarism, than are to be found in John Randolph's letters. 
At a time (1831) when he would not buy a pocket-knife made 
in New England, nor send a book to be bound north of the Poto- 
mac, we find him writing of his native State in these terms : — 

" I passed a night in Farrarville, in an apartment which, in England, 
would not have been thought fit for my servant ; nor on the Continent 



182 / JOHN RANDOLPH. 

did he ever occupy so mean a one. Wherever I stop it is the same : 
walls black and filthy ; bed and furniture sordid ; furniture scanty and 
mean, generally broken ; no mirror ; no fire-irons ; in short, dirt and 
discomfort universally prevail ; and in most private houses the matter 
is not mended. The cows milked a half a mile off, or not got up, and 
no milk to be had at any distance, — no Jordan ; — in fact, all the old 
gentry are gone, and the nouveaux riches, when they have the inclina- 
tion, do not know how to live. Biscuit, not half cuit; everything 
animal and vegetable smeared with butter and lard. Poverty stalking 
through the land, while we are engaged in political metaph3'slcs, and, 
amidst our filth and vermin, like the Spaniard and Portuguese, look 
down with contempt on other nations, — England and France espe- 
cially. We hug our lousy cloak around us, take another chaw of tub- 
backer, float the room with nastiness, or ruin the grate and fire-irons, 
where they happen not to be rusty, and try conclusions upon constitu- 
tional points." 

What truth and painting in this passage ! But if we had 
asked this suffering genius as to the cause of his " country's " 
decline, he would have given us a mad answer indeed. He 
would have said, in his wild way, that it was all Tom Jefferson's 
doing, sir. Tom Jefferson abolished primogeniture in Virginia, 
and thus, as John Randolph believed, destroyed the old families, 
the life and glory of the State. Tom Jefferson was unfaithful to 
the States' Rights and strict-constructionist creed, of which he 
was the expounder and trustee, and thus let in the " American 
system " of Henry Clay, with its protective tariff, which completed 
the ruin of the agricultural States. This was his simple theory 
of the situation. These were the reasons why he despaired of 
ever again seeing, to use his own language, " the Nelsons, the 
Pages, the Byrds, and Fairfaxes, living in their palaces, and 
driving their coaches and sixes, or the good old Virginia gentle- 
men in the Assembly drinking their twenty and forty bowls of 
rack punches, and madeira and claret, in lieu of a knot of deputy 
sheriffs and hack attorneys, each with his cruet of whiskey before 
him, and puddle of tobacco-spittle between his legs." He was as 
far from seeing any relation of cause and effect between the 
coaches, palaces, and bowls of punch, and the " knot of deputy 
sheriffs," as a Fenian is from discerning any connection between 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 183 

the Irish rackrenting of the last century, and the Irish beggary 
of this. Like conditions produce Hke characters. How interest- 
ing to discover in this republican, this native Virginian of Eng- 
lish stock, a perfect and splendid specimen of a species of tory 
supposed to exist only in such countries as Poland, Spain, Ire- 
land, and the Highlands of Scotland, but which in reality does 
abound in the Southern States of this Union, — the tory, con- 
scious of his country's ruin, but clinging with fanatical and proud 
tenacity to the principles that ruined it. 

Dear tobacco, virgin land, and cheap negroes gave the several 
families in Virginia, for three generations, a showy, delusive 
prosperity, which produced a considerable number of dissolute, 
extravagant men, and educated a few to a high degree of knowl- 
edge and wisdom. Of these families, the Randolphs were the 
most numerous, and among the oldest, richest, and most in- 
fluential. The soldiers of the late army of the Potomac know 
well the lands which produced the tobacco that maintained them 
in baronial state. It was on Turkey Island (an island no more), 
twenty miles below Richmond, close to Malvern Hill of immortal 
memory, that the founder of the family settled in 1660, — a Cav- 
alier of ancient Yorkshire race ruined in the civil wars. Few of 
our troops, perhaps, who rambled over Turkey Bend, were 
aware that the massive ruins still visible there, and which served 
as negro quarters seven years ago, are the remains of the great 
and famous mansion built by this Cavalier, turned tobacco-plant- 
er. This home of the Randolphs was so elaborately splendid, 
that a man served out the whole term of his apprenticeship to 
the trade of carpenter in one of its rooms. The lofty dome was 
for many years a beacon to the navigator. Such success had 
this Randolph in raising tobacco during the fifty-one years of his 
residence upon Turkey Island, that to each of his six sons he 
gave or left a large estate, besides portioning liberally his two 
daughters. Five of these sons reared families, and the sons of 
those sons were also thriving and prolific men ; so that, in the 
course of three generations, Virginia was fidl of Randolphs. 
There was, we believe, not one of the noted controlhng families 
that was not related to them by blood or marriage. 



184 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

In 1773, when John Randolph was born, the family was still 
powerful ; and the region last trodden by the Army of the Po- 
tomac was still adorned by the seats of its leading members. 
Cawsons, the mansion in which he was born, was situated at 
the junction of the James and Appomattox, in full view of City 
Point and Bermuda Hundred, and only an after-breakfast walk 
from Dutch Gap. The mansion long ago disappeared, and 
nothing now marks its site but negro huts. Many of those ex- 
quisite spots on the James and Appomattox, which we have seen 
men pause to admire while the shells were bursting overhead, 
were occupied sixty years ago by the sumptuous abodes of the 
Randolphs and families related to them. Mattoax, the house in 
which John Randolph passed much of his childhood, was on a 
bluff of the Appomattox, two miles above Petersburg; and 
Bizarre, the estate on which he spent his boyhood, lay above, 
on both sides of the same river. Over all that extensive and en- 
chanting region, trampled and torn and laid waste by hostile 
armies in 1864 and 18 Go, John Randolph rode and hunted from 
the time he could sit a pony and handle a gun. Not a vestige 
remains of the opulence and splendor of his early days. Not one 
of the mansions inhabited or visited by him in his youth fur- 
nished a target for our cannoneers or plunder for our camps. A 
country better adapted to all good purposes of man, nor one 
more pleasing to the eye, hardly exists on earth ; but before it 
was trodden by armies, it had become little less than desolate. 
The James River is as navigable as the Hudson, and flows 
through a region far more fertile, longer settled, more inviting, 
and of more genial climate ; but there are upon the Hudson's 
banks more cities than there are rotten landings upon the James. 
The shores of this beautiful and classic stream are so unexpect- 
edly void of even the signs of human habitation, that our soldiers 
were often ready to exclaim : " Can this be the river of Captain 
John Smith and Pocahontas? Was it here that Jamestown 
stood ? Is it possible that white men have lived in this delight- 
ful land for two hundred and fifty-seven years .'* Or has not the 
captain of the steamboat made a mistake, and turned into tho 
wrong river?" 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 185 

One scene of John Randolph's boyhood reveals to us the entire 
political economy of the Old Dominion. He used to relate it 
himself, when denouncing the manufacturing system of Henry 
Clay. One ship, he would say, sufficed, in those happy days, for 
all the commerce of that part of Virginia with the Old World, 
and that ship was named the London Trader. When this ship 
was about to sail, all the family were called together, and each 
member was invited to mention the articles which he or she 
wanted from London. First, the mother of the family gave in 
her list ; next the children, in the order of their ages ; next, the 
overseer ; then the mammy, the children's black nurse ; lastly, the 
house servants, according to their rank, down even to their chil- 
dren. When months had passed, and the time for the ship's return 
was at hand, the weeks, the days, the hours were counted ; and 
when the signal was at last descried, the whole household burst 
into exclamations of delight, and there was festival in the family 
for many days. 

How picturesque and interesting ! How satisfactory to the 
tory mind ! But alas ! this system of exhausting the soil in the 
production of tobacco by the labor of slaves, and sending for all 
manufactured articles to England, was more ruinous even than it 
was picturesque. No middle class could exist, as in England, to 
supply the waste of aristocratic blood and means ; and in three 
generations, rich and beautiful Virginia, created for empire, was 
only another Ireland. But it was a picturesque system, and John 
Randolph, poet and tory, revelled in the recollection of it. " Our 
Egyptian taskmasters," he would say, meaning the manufacturers 
of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England, 
" only wish to leave us the recollection of past times, and insist 
upon our purchasing their vile domestic stuffs ; but it won't do : 
no wooden nutmegs for old Virginia." 

His own pecuniary history was an illustration of the working 
of the system. His father left forty thousand acres of the best 
land in the world, and several hundred slaves, to his three boys ; 
the greater part of which property, by the early death of the two 
elder brothers, fell to John. As the father died when John was 
but three years old, there was a minority of eighteen years, dur- 



186 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

ing which the hoy's portion shoul^ have greatly increased. So 
far from increasing, an old debt of his father's — a London debt, 
incurred for goods brought to a joyous household in the London 
Trader — remained undiminished at his coming of age, and hung 
about his neck for many years afterward. Working two large 
estates, with a force of negroes equivalent to one hundred and eigh- 
ty full field hands, he could not afford himself the luxury of a iv\\) 
to Europe until he was fifty years old. The amount of this debt 
we do not know, but he says enough about it for us to infer that 
it was not of very large amount in comparison with his great re- 
sources. One hundred and eighty stalwart negroes working the 
best land in the world, under a man so keen and vigilant as this 
last of the noble Randolphs, and yet making scarcely any head- 
way for a quarter of a century ! 

The blood of this fine breed of men was also running low. 
Both the parents of John Randolph and both of his brothers died 
young, and he himself inherited weakness which early developed 
into disease. One of his half-brothers died a madman. " My 
whole name and race," he would say, " lie under a curse. I feel 
the curse clinging to me." He was a fair, delicate child, more 
like a girl than a boy, and more inclined, as a child, to the sports 
of girls than of boys. His mother, a fond, tender, gentle lady, 
nourished his softer qualities, powerless to govern him, and prob- 
ably never attempting it. Nevertheless, he was no girl ; he was 
a genuine son of the South. Such was the violence of his pas- 
sions, that, before he was four years old, he sometimes in a fit of 
anger fell senseless upon the floor, and was restored only after 
much effort. His step-father, who was an honorable man, seems 
never to have attempted either to control his passions or develop 
his intellect. He grew up, as many boys of Virginia did, and 
do, unchecked, unguided, untrained. Turned loose in a miscel- 
laneous library, nearly every book he read tended to intensify his 
feelings or inflame his imagination. His first book was Voltaire's 
Charles XIL, and a better book for a boy has never been writ- 
ten. Then he fell upon the Spectator^ Before he was twelve 
he had read the Arabian Nights, Orlando, Robinson Crusoe, 
Smollett's Works, Reynard the Fox, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, 



JOHN RANDOLrH. 187 

Tom Jones, Gulliver, Shakespeare, Plutarch's Lives, Pope's 
Homer, Goldsmith's Rome, Percy's Reliques, Thomson's Sea- 
sons, Young, Gray, and Chatterton, — a gallon of sack to a pen- 
ny's worth of bread. A good steady drill in arithmetic, geogra- 
phy, and language might have given his understanding a chance ; 
but this ill-starred boy never had a steady drill in anything. He 
never remained longer at any one school than a year, and he 
learned at school very little that he needed most to know. In 
the course of his desultory schooling he picked up some Latin, a 
little Greek, a good deal of French, and an inconceivable medley 
of odds and ends of knowledge, which his wonderful memory 
enabled him to use sometimes with startling effect, • 

Everywhere else, in the whole world, children are taught that 
virtue is self-control. In the Southern States, among these 
tobacco-lords, boys learned just the opposite lesson, — tliat virtue 
is self-indulgence. This particular youth, thin-skinned, full of 
talent, fire, and passion, the heir to a large estate, fatherless, 
would have been in danger anywhere of growing up untrained, 
— a wild beast in broadcloth. In the Virginia of that day, in the 
circle in which he lived, there was nothing for him in the way 
either of curb or spur. He did what he pleased, and nothing 
else. All that was noble in his life, — those bursts of really fine 
oratory, his flashes of good sense, his occasional generosities, his 
hatred of debt, and his eager haste to pay it, — all these things 
were due to the original excellence of his race. In the very 
dregs of good wine there is flavor. We cannot make even good 
vinegar out of a low quality of wine. 

His gentle mother taught him all the political economy he ever 
took to heart. " Johnny," said she to him one day, when they 
had reached a point in their ride that commanded an extensive 
view, " all this land belongs to you and your brother. It is your 
father's inheritance. When you get to be a man, you must not 
sell your land : it is the first step to ruin for a boy to part with 
his father's home. Be sure to keep it as long as you live. Keep 
your land, and your land will keep you." There never came a 
time when his mind was mature and masculine enough to co7i- 
sider this advice. He clung to his land as Charles Stuart clung 
to his prerogative. 



188 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

All the early life of this youth was wanderuig and desultory. 
At fourteen, we find him at Princeton College in New Jersey, 
where, we are told, he fought a duel, exchanged shots twice with 
his adversary, and put a ball into his body which he carried all his 
life. By this time, too, the precocious and ungovernable boy had 
become, as he flattered himself, a complete atheist. One of his 
favorite amusements at Princeton was to burlesque the precise 
and perhaps ungraceful Presbyterians of the place. The library 
of his Virginian home, it appears, was furnished with a great 
supply of what the French mildly call the literature of incredu- 
lity, — Helvetius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, D'Alerabert, and 
the rest. The boy, in his rage for knowledge, had read vast 
quantities of this literature, and, of course, embraced the theory 
of the writers that pushed denial farthest. For twenty-two years, 
he says in one of his letters, he never entered a church. Great 
pleasure it gave him to show how superior the Mahometan re- 
hgion was to the Christian, and to recite specimens of what he 
took delight in styling Hebrew jargon. The Psalms of David 
were his special aversion. 

Almost all gifted and fearless lads that have Hved in Christen- 
dom during the last hundred years have had a fit of this kind be- 
tween fifteen and twenty-five. The strength of the tendency to 
question the grounds of belief must be great indeed to bear away 
with it a youth like this, formed by Nature to believe. John 
Randolph had no more intellectual right to be a sceptic, than he 
had a moral right to be a republican. A person whose imagina- 
tion is quick and warm, whose feelings are acute, and whose in- 
tellect is wholly untrained, can find no comfort except in belief. 
His scepticism is a mere freak of vanity or self-will. Coming 
upon the stage of life when unbelief was fjishionable in high 
drawing-rooms, he became a sceptic. But Nature will have her 
way with us all, and so this atheist at fifteen was an Evangelical 
at forty-five. 

His first political bias was equally at war with his nature. 
John Randolph was wholly a tory ; there was not in his whole 
composition one republican atom. But coming early under the 
direct personal influence of Thomas Jefferson, whose every fibre 



JOHN EAXDOLPH. 189 

was republican, he, too, the sympathetic tory of genius, espoused 
the people's cause. He was less than twenty-two years, however, 
in recovering from this false tendency. 

Summoned from Princeton, after only a few months' residence, 
by the death of his mother, he went next to Columbia College, 
in the city of New York, where for a year or two he read Greek 
with a tutor, especially Demosthenes. At New York he saw the 
first Congress under the new Constitution assemble, and was one 
of the concourse that witnessed the scene of General Washing- 
ton's taking the oath on the balcony of the old City Hall. It 
seemed to this Virginia boy natural enough that a Virginian 
should be at the head of the government ; not so, that a Yankee 
should hold the second place and preside over the Senate. Forty 
years after, he recalled with bitterness a trifling incident, which, 
trifling as it was, appears to have been the origin of his intense 
antipathy to all of the blood of John Adams. The coachman of 
the Vice-President, it seems, told the brother of this little repub- 
lican tory to stand back ; or, as the orator stated it, forty years 
after, " I remember the manner in which my brother was spurned 
by the coachman of the Vice-President for coming too near the 
arms emblazoned on the vice-regal carriage." 

Boy as he was, he had already taken sides with those who 
opposed the Constitution. The real ground of his opposition to 
it was, that it reduced the importance of Virginia, — great Vir- 
ginia! Under the new Constitution, there was a man on the 
Western Continent of more consequence than the Governor of 
Virginia, there were legislative bodies more powerful than the 
Legislature of Virginia. This was the secret of the disgust with 
which he heard it proposed to style the President " His High- 
ness " and " His Majesty." This was the reason why it kindled 
his ire to read, in the newspapers of 1789, that " the most honor- 
able Hufus King " had been elected Senator. It was only Jef- 
ferson and a very few other of the grand Virginians who objected 
for liigher and larger reasons. 

In March, 1790, Mr. Jefferson reached New York, after his 
return from France, and entered upon his new office of Secretary 
of State under General Washington. He was a distant relative 



190 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

of our precocious student, then seventeen years of age ; and the 
two families had just been brought nearer together by the mar- 
riage of one of Mr. JeflPerson's daughters to a Randolph. The 
reaction against republican principles was at full tide ; and no 
one will ever know to what lengths it would have gone, had not 
Thomas Jefferson so opportunely come upon the scene. At his 
modest abode, No. 57 Maiden Lane, the two Randolph lads — 
John, seventeen, Theodorick, nineteen — were frequent visitors. 
Theodorick was a roistering blade, much opposed to his younger 
brother's reading habits, caring himself for nothing but pleasure. 
John was an eager politician. During the whole period of the 
reaction, first at New York, afterward at Philadelphia, finally in 
Virginia, John Randolph sat at the feet of the great Democrat 
of America, fixscinated by his conversation, and generally con- 
vinced by his reasoning. It is a mistake, however, to suppose 
that he was a blind follower of Mr. Jefferson, even then. On the 
question of States' Rights, he was in the most perfect accord with 
him. But when, in 1791, the eyes of all intelligent America 
were fixed upon the two combatants, Edmund Burke and Thomas 
Paine, Burke condemning, Paine defending, the French Revolu- 
tion, the inherited instincts of John Randolph asserted themselves, 
and he gave all his heart to Burke. Lord Chatham and Edmund 
Burke were the men who always held the first place in the esteem 
of this kindred spirit. Mr. Jefferson, of course, sympathized with 
the view of his friend Paine, and never wavered in his belief 
that the French Revolution was necessary and beneficial. A 
generous and gifted nation strangled, moved him to deeper com- 
passion than a class proscribed. He dwelt more upon the long 
and bitter provocation, than upon the brief frenzy which was only 
one of its dire results. Louis XIV. and Louis XV., picturesque 
as they were, excited within him a profounder hori-or than ugly 
Marat and Robespierre. He pitied haggard, distracted France 
more than graceful and hiQ;h-bred Marie Antoinette. In other 
words, he was not a tory. 

There was a difference, too, between Mr. Jeflferson and his 
young kinsman on the points upon which they agreed. Jefferson 
was a States' Rights man, and a strict constructionist, because he 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 191 

was a republican ; Eandolph, because he was a Virginian. Jef- 
ferson thought the government should be small, that the people 
might be great ; John Randolph thought the government should 
be small, that Virginia might be great. Pride in Virginia 
was John Randolph's ruling passion, not less in 1790 than 
in 1828. The welflire and dignity of man were the darling 
objects of Thomas Jefferson's great soul, from youth to hoary 
age. 

Here w^ have the explanation of the great puzzle of American 
politics, — the unnatural alliance, for sixty years, between the 
plantation lords of the South and the democracy of the North, 
both venerating the name of Jefferson, and both professing his 
principles. It was not, as many suppose, a compact of scurvy 
politicians for the sake of political victory. Every great party, 
whether religious or political, that has held power long in a coun- 
try, has been founded upon conviction, — disinterested conviction. 
Some of the cotton and tobacco lords, men of intellect and cul- 
ture, were democrats and abolitionists, like Jefferson himself. 
Others took up with republicanism because it was the reigning 
affectation in their circle, as it was in the chateaux and drawing- 
rooms of France. But their State pride it was that bound them 
as a class to the early Republican party. The Southern aristo- 
crat saw in Jefferson the defender of the sovereignty of his State : 
the " smutched artificer " of the North gloried in Jefferson as the 
champion of the rights of man. While the Republican party was 
in opposition, battling with unmanageable John Adams, with Brit- 
ish Hamilton, and with a foe more powerful than both of those 
men together, Robespierre, — while it had to contend with Wash- 
ington's all but irresistible influence, and with the nearly unani- 
mous opposition of educated and orthodox New England, — this 
distinction was not felt. Many a tobacco aristocrat cut off" his 
pig-tail and wore trousers down to his ankles, which were then 
the outward signs of the inward democratic grace. But time 
tries all. It is now apparent to every one that the strength of the 
original Democratic party in the South was the States' Rights 
portion of its platform, while in the North it was the sentiment 
of republicanism that kept the party together. 



192 JOHN EANDOLPH. 

Young politicians should study this period of their country's 
history. If ever again a political party shall rule the United 
States for sixty years, or for twenty years, it will be, we think, a 
party resembling the original Republican party, as founded in 
America by Franklin, and organized under Jefferson. Its plat- 
form will be, perhaps, something like this : simple, economical 
government machinery ; strict construction of the Constitution ; 
the rights of the States scrupulously observed ; the suffrage open 
to all, without regard to color or sex, — open to all, but conferred 
only upon men and women capable of exercising it. 

John Randolph agreed upon another point with Mr. Jefferson : 
he was an abolitionist. But for the English debt which he in- 
herited, it is extremely probable that he would have followed the 
example of many of the best Virginians of his day, and emanci- 
pated his slaves. He would, perhaps, have done so when that 
debt was discharged, instead of waiting to do it by his last will, 
but for the forlorn condition of freedmen in a Slave State. His 
eldest brother wrote, upon the division of the estate, in 1794 : "I 
want not a single negro for any other purpose than his immediate 
emancipation. I shudder when I think that such an insignificant 
animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid pow- 
er." He told his guardian that he would give up all his laud 
rather than own a slave. There was no moment in the whole life 
of John Randolph when he did not sympathize with this view of 
slavery, and he died expressing it. But though he was, if possi- 
ble, a more decided abolitionist than Jefferson, he never for a 
moment doubted the innate superiority of a Virginia gentleman to 
all the other inhabitants of America. He had not even the com- 
plaisance to take his hair out of queue, nor hide his thin legs in 
pantaloons. He was not endowed by nature with understanding 
enough to rise superior to the prejudices that had come down to 
him through generations of aristocrats. He was weak enough, 
indeed, to be extremely vain of the fact that a grandfather of his 
had married one of the great-granddaughters of Pocahontas, who, 
it was believed, performed the act that renders her famous at 
Point of Rocks on the Appomattox, within walking distance of 
one of the Randolph mansions. It is interesting to observe what 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 193 

an unquestioning, clillJlike faith he always had in the superiority 
of his caste, of his State, and of his section. lie once got so far 
as to speak favorably of the talents of Daniel Webster ; but he 
was obliged to conclude by saying that he was the best debater 
he had ever known 7iorth of the Potomac. 

This singular being was twenty-six years of age before any 
one suspected, least of all himself, that he possessed any of the 
talents which command the attention of men. His life had been 
desultory and purposeless. He had studied law a little, attended 
a couree or two of medical lectures, travelled somewhat, dipped 
into hundreds of books, read a few with passionate admiration, 
had lived much with the ablest men of that day, — a familiar 
guest at Jeflferson's fireside, and no stranger at President Wash- 
ington's stately table. Father, mother, and both brothers were 
dead. He was lonely, sad, and heavily burdened with property, 
with debt, and the care of many dependants. His appearance 
was even more singular than his situation. At twenty-three he 
had still the aspect of a boy. He actually grew half a head 
after he was twenty-three years of age. " A tall, gawky-looking, 
flaxen-haired stripling, apparently of the age of sixteen or 
eighteen, with complexion of a good parchment color, beardless 
chin, and as much assumed self-consequence as any two-footed 
animal I ever saw." So he was described by a Charleston book- 
seller, who saw him in his store in 179G, carelessly turning over 
books. " At length," continues this narrator, " he hit upon some- 
thing that struck his fancy ; and never did I witness so sudden, 
so perfect a change of the human countenance. That which was 
before dull and heavy in a moment became animated, and flashed 
with the brightest beams of intellect. He stepped up to the old 
gray-headed gentleman (his companion), and giving him a thun- 
dering slap on the shoulder, said, ' Jack, look at this ! ' " Thus 
was he described at twenty-three. At twenty-six he was half a 
head taller, and quite as slender as before. His light hair was 
then combed back into an elegant queue. His eye of hazel was 
bright and restless. His chin was still beardless. He wore a 
frock-coat of light blue cloth, yellow breeches, silk stockings, and 
top-boots. Great was the love he bore his horses, which were 

9 M 



194 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

numerous, and as good as Virginia could boast. It is amusing to 
notice that the horse upon which this 25attern aristocrat used to 
scamper across the country, in French-Revolution times, was 
named Jacohin ! 

It was in March, 1799, the year before the final victory of the 
Republicans over the Federal party, that the neighbors of John 
Randolph and John Randolph himself discovered, to their great 
astonishment, that he was an orator. He had been nominated 
for Representative in Congress. Patrick Henry, aged and in- 
firm, had been so adroitly manipulated by the Federalists, that he 
had at length agreed to speak to the people in support of the 
hateful administration of John Adams. John Randolph, who had 
never in his life addressed an audience, nor, as be afterwards 
declared, had ever imagined that he could do so, suddenly deter- 
mined, the very evening before the day named for the meeting, 
to reply to Patrick Henry. It was an open-air meeting. No 
structure in Virginia could have contained the multitude that 
thronged to hear the transcendent orator, silent for so many 
years, and now summoned from his retirement by General Wash- 
ington himself to speak for a Union imperilled and a government 
assailed. He spoke with the power of other days, for he was 
really alarmed for his country ; and when he had finished his im- 
passioned harangue, he sunk back into the arms of his friends, as 
one of them said, " like the sun setting in his glory." For the 
moment he had all hearts with him. The sturdiest Republican 
in Virginia could scarcely resist the spell of that amazing oratory. 

John Randolph rose to reply. His first sentences showed not 
only that he could speak, but that he knew the artifices of an old 
debater ; for he began by giving eloquent expression to the vene- 
ration felt by his hearers for the aged patriot who had just ad- 
dressed them. He spoke for three hours, it is said ; and if we 
may judge from the imperfect outline of his speech that has come 
down to us, he spoke as well that day as ever he did. States' 
Rights was the burden of his speech. That the Alien and Sedi- 
tion Law was an outrage upon human nature, he may have be- 
lieved ; but what he felt was, that it was an outrage upon the 
Commonwealth of Virginia. He may have thought it desirable 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 195 

that all governments should confine themselves to the simple 
business of compelling the faithful performance of contracts ; but 
•what he insisted upon was, that the exercise by the government 
of the United States of any power not expressly laid down in 
the letter of the Constitution was a wrong to Virginia. If John 
Adams is right, said he, in substance, then Virginia has gained 
nothing by the Revolution but a change of masters, — New En- 
land for Old England, — which he thought was not a change for 
the better. 

It was unnecessary, in the Virginia of 1799, for the head of the 
house of Randolph to be an orator in order to secure an election to 
the House of Representatives. He was elected, of course. When 
he came forward to be sworn in, his appearance was so youthful, 
that the Clerk of the House asked him, with the utmost polite- 
ness, whether he had attained the legal age. His reply was emi- 
nently characteristic of the tobacco lord : " Go, sir, and ask my 
constituents : they sent me here." As there was no one present 
authorized by the Constitution to box the ears of impudent boys 
on the floor of the House, he was sworn without further question. 
It has often occurred to us that this anecdote, which John Ran- 
dolph used to relate with much satisfaction, was typical of much 
that has since occurred. The excessive courtesy of the officer, 
the insolence of the Virginia tobacconist, the submission of the 
Clerk to that insolence, — who has not witnessed such scenes in 
the Capitol at Washington ? 

It was in December, 1799, that this fiery and erratic genius 
took his seat in the House of Representatives. John Adams had 
still sixteen months to serve as target for the sarcasm of the 
young talent of the nation. To calm readers of the present day, 
Mr. Adams does really seem a strange personage to preside over 
a go\ernment ; but the calm reader of the present day cannot 
realize the state of things in the year 1800. We cannot conceive 
what a fright the world had had in the excesses of the French 
Revolution, and the recent usurpation of General Bonaparte. 
France had made almost every timid man in Christendom a tory. 
Serious and respectable people, above forty, and enjoying a com- 
fortable income, felt that there was only one thing left for a de- 



196 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

cent person to do, — to assist in preserving the authority of gov- 
ernment. John Adams, by the constitution of his mind, was as 
much a tory as John Randolph ; for he too possessed imagination 
and talent disproportioned to his understanding. To be a demo- 
crat it is necessary to have a little pure intellect ; since your dem- 
ocrat is merely a person who can, occasionally, see things and 
men as they are. New England will always be democratic 
enough as long as her boys learn mental arithmetic ; and Ireland 
will always be the haunt of tories as long as her children are 
brought up upon songs, legends, and ceremonies. To make a dem- 
ocratic people, it is only necessary to accustom them to use their 
minds. 

Nothing throws such light upon the state of things in the 
United States in 1800, as the once famous colhsion between these 
two natural tories, John Adams and John Randolph, which gave 
instantaneous celebrity to the new member, and made him an idol 
of the Republican party. In his maiden speech, which was in 
opposition to a proposed increase of the army, he spoke disparag- 
ingly of the troojis already serving, using the words ragamuffins 
and mercenaries. In this passage of his speech, the partisan 
spoke, not the man. John Randolph expressed the real feeling 
of his nature toward soldiers, when, a few years later, on the 
same floor, he said : " If I must have a master, let him be one with 
epaulets ; something which I can look up to ; but not a master 
with a quill behind his ear." In 1800, however, it pleased him 
to style the soldiers of the United States ragamuffins and merce- 
naries ; which induced two young officers to push, hustle, and 
otherwise discommode and insult liim at the theatre. Strange to 
relate, this hot Virginian, usually so prompt with a challenge to 
mortal combat, reported the misconduct of these officers to the 
President of the United States. This eminently proper act he 
did in an eminently proper manner, thanks to his transient con- 
nection with the Republican party. Having briefly stated the 
case, he concluded his letter to the President thus : " The inde- 
pendence of the legislature has been attacked, and the majesty of 
the people, of which you are the principal representative, insulted, 
and your authority contemned. In their name, I demand that a 



JOHN EANDOLPH. 197 

provision commensurate with the evil be made, and which will be 
calculated to deter others from any future attempt to introduce 
the reign of terror into our country. In addressing you in this 
plain language of man, I give you, sir, the best proof I can afford 
of the estimation in which I hold your office and your understand- 
ing ; and I assure you with truth, that I am, with respect, your 
fellow-citizen, John Randolph." . 

This language so well accords with our present sense of the 
becoming, that a person unacquainted with that period would be 
unable to point to a single phrase calculated to give offence. In 
the year 1800, however, the President of the United States saw 
in every expression of the letter contemptuous and calculated in- 
sult. " The majesty of the people," forsooth ! The President 
merely their " representative " ! " plain language of man " ! and 
" with respect, your fellow-citizen " ! To the heated imaginations 
of the Federalists of 1800, language of this kind, addressed to 
the President, was simply prophetic of the guillotine. So amazed 
and indignant was Mr. Adams, that he submitted the letter to his 
Cabinet, requesting their opinion as to what should be done with 
it. Still more incredible is it, that four members of the Cabinet, 
in writing, declared their opinion to be, that " the contemptuous 
language therein adopted requires a public censure." They 
further said, that, " if such addresses remain unnoticed, we are 
apprehensive that a precedent will be established which must ne- 
cessarily destroy the ancient, respectable, and urbane usages of 
this country." Some lingering remains of good-sense in the other 
member of the Cabinet prevented the President from acting 
upon their advice ; and he merely sent the letter to the House, 
with the remark that he " submitted the whole letter and its ten- 
dencies " to their consideration, " without any other comments on 
its matter and style." 

This affair, trivial as it was, sufficed in that mad time to lift the 
young member from Virginia into universal notoriety, and caused 
him to be regarded as a shining light of the Republican party. 
The splendor of his talents as an orator gave him at once the ear 
of the House and the admiration of the Republican side of it ; 
while the fury of his zeal against the President rendered him 



198 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

most efficient in the Presidential canvass. No young man, per- 
haps, did more than he toward the election of Jefferson and Burr 
in 1800. He was indeed, at that time, before disease had wasted 
him, and while still enjoying the confidence of the Republican 
leaders and subject to the needed restraints of party, a most effec- 
tive speaker, whether in the House or upon the stump. He had 
something of Burke's torrent-like fluency, and something of 
Chatham's spirit of command, with a piercing, audacious sarcasm 
all his own. He was often unjust and unreasonable, but never 
dull. He never spoke in his life without being at least atten- 
tively listened to. 

Mr. Jefferson came into power ; and John Randolph, triumph- 
antly re-elected to Congress, was appointed Chairman of the 
Committee of Ways and Means, — a position not less important 
then than now. He was the leader of the Republican majority 
in the House. His social rank, his talents, his position in the 
House of Representatives, the admiration of the party, the confi- 
dence of the President, all united to render him the chief of the 
young men of the young nation. It was captivating to the popu- 
lar imagination to behold this heir of an ancient house, this pos- 
sessor of broad lands, this orator of genius, belonging to the party 
of the people. He aided to give the Republican party the only 
element of power which it lacked, — social consideration. The 
party had numbers and talent ; but it had not that which could 
make a weak, rich man vain of the title of Republican. At the 
North, clergy, professors, rich men, were generally Federalists, 
and it was therefore peculiarly pleasing to Democrats to point to 
this eminent and brilliant Virginian as a member of their party. 
He discharged the duties of his position well, showing ability as 
a man of business, and living in harmony with his colleagues. 
As often as he reached Washington, at the beginning of a ses- 
sion, he found the President's card (so Colonel Benton tells us) 
awaiting him for dinner the next day at the White House, when 
the great measures of the session were discussed. It was he who 
moved the resolutions of respect for the memory of that consum- 
mate republican, that entire and perfect democrat, Samuel Adams 
of Massachusetts. It was he who arranged the financial measures 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 199 

required for the purchase of Louisiana, and made no objection 
to the purchase. During the first six years of Mr. Jefferson's 
Presidency, he shrank from no duty which his party had a right 
to claim from him. Whatever there might be narrow or erro- 
neous in his poHtical creed was neutralized by the sentiment of 
nationality which the capital inspires, and by the practical views 
which must needs be taken of public affairs by the Chairman of 
the Committee of Ways and Means. 

These were the happy years of his life, and the most honora- 
ble ones. Never, since governments have existed, has a country 
been governed so wisely, so honestly, and so economically as the 
United States was governed during the Presidency of Thomas 
Jefferson. Randolph himself, after twenty years of opposition to 
the policy of this incomparable ruler, could still say of his admin- 
istration, that it was the only one he had ever known which 
" seriously and in good faith was disposed to give up its patron- 
age," and which desired to go further in depriving itself of power 
than the people themselves had thought. " Jefferson," said John 
Randolph in 1828, "was the only man I ever knew or heard of 
who really, truly, and honestly, not only said. Nolo episcopari, 
but actually refused the mitre." 

For six years, as we have said, Mr. Randolph led the Repub- 
lican party in the House of Representatives, and supported the 
measures of the administration, — all of them. In the spring of 
1807, without apparent cause, he suddenly went into opposition, 
and from that time opposed the policy of the administration, — 
the whole of it. 

Why this change ? If there were such a thing as going ap- 
prentice to the art of discovering truth, a master in that art could 
not set an apprentice a better preliminary lesson than this : Why 
did John Randolph go into opposition in 1807 ? The gossips of 
that day had no difficulty in answering the question. Some said 
he had asked Mr, Jefferson for a foreign mission, and been re- 
fused. Others thought it was jealousy of Mr. Madison, who was 
known to be the President's choice for the succession. Others 
surmised that an important state secret had been revealed to 
other members of the House, but not to him. These opinions 



200 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

our tyro would find very positively recorded, and he would also, 
in the course of his researches, come upon the statement that Mr. 
Randolph himself attributed the breach to his having beaten the 
President at a game of chess, which the President could not forgive. 
The truth is, that John Randolph bolted for the same reason 
that a steel spi-ing resumes its original bent the instant the re- 
straining force is withdrawn. His position as leader of a party 
was irksome, because it obliged him to work in harness, and he 
had never been broken to harness. His party connection bound 
him to side with France in the great contest then raging between 
France and England, and yet his whole soul sympathized with 
England. This native Virginian was more consciously and posi- 
tively English than any native of England ever was. English 
literature had nourished his mind ; English names captivated his 
imagination ; English traditions, feelings, instincts, habits, preju- 
dices, were all congenial to his nature. How hard for such a 
man to side officially with Napoleon in those gigantic wars ! Ab- 
horring Napoleon with all a Randolph's force of antipathy, it was 
nevertheless expected of him, as a good Republican, to interpret 
leniently the man who, besides being the armed soldier of democ- 
racy, had sold Louisiana to the United States. Randolph, more- 
over, was an absolute aristocrat. He delighted to tell the House 
of Representatives that he, being a Virginian slaveholder, was 
not obliged to curry favor with his coachman or his shoeblack, 
lest when he drove to the polls the coachman should dismount 
from his box, or the shoeblack drop his brushes, and neutralize 
their master's vote by voting on the other side. How he exulted 
in the fact that in Virginia none but freeholders could vote ! 
How happy he was to boast, that, in all that Commonwealth, 
there was no such thing as a ballot-box ! " May I never live to 
see the day," he would exclaim, " when a Virginian shall be 
ashamed to declare aloud at the polls for whom he casts his 
vote ! " What pleasure he took in speaking of his Virginia wilder- 
ness as a " barony," and signing his name " John Randolph of 
Roanoke," and in wearing the garments that were worn in Vir- 
ginia when the great tobacco lords were running through their 
estates in the fine old picturesque and Irish fashion ! 



JOHN EANDOLPn. 201 

Obviously, an antique of this pattern was out of place as a 
leader in the Republican party. For a time the spell of Jeffer- 
son's winning genius, and the presence of a powerful opposition, 
kept him in some subjection; but in 1807 that spell had spent its 
force, and the Federal party was not formidable. John Randolph 
was himself again. The immediate occasion of the rupture was, 
probably, Mr. Jefferson's evident preference of James Madison 
as his successor. We have a right to infer this, from the ex- 
treme and lasting rancor which Randolph exhibited toward Mr. 
Madison, who he used to say was as mean a man for a Virginian 
as John Quincy Adams was for a Yankee. Nor ought we ever 
to speak of this gifted and unhappy man without considering his 
physical condition. It appears from the slight notices we have 
of this vital matter, that about the year 1807 the stock of vigor 
■which his youth had acquired was gone, and he lived thenceforth 
a miserable invalid, afflicted with diseases that sharpen the 
temper and narrow the mind. John Randolph ivell might have 
outgrown inherited prejudices and limitations, and attained to the 
stature of a modern, a national, a republican man. John Randolph 
sick — radically and incurably sick — ceased to grow just when 
his best growth would naturally have begun. 

The sudden defection of a man so conspicuous and considera- 
ble, at a time when the Republican party was not aware of its 
strength, struck dismay to many minds, who felt, with Jefferson, 
that to the Republican party in the United States were confided 
the best interests of human nature. Mr. Jefferson was not in the 
least alarmed, because he knew the strength of the party and the 
weakness of the man. The letter which he wrote on this subject 
to Mr. Monroe ought to be learned by heart by every politician 
in the country, — by the self-seekers, for the warning which it 
gives them, and by the patriotic, for the comfort which it affords 
them in time of trouble. Some readers, perhaps, will be re- 
minded by it of events which occurred at Washington not longer 
ago than last winter.* 

" Our old friend Mercer broke off from us some time ago ; at first, 
professing to disdain joining the Federalists ; yet, from the habit of 

* 1865 -G. 
9* 



202 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

voting togetlier, becoming soon identified with tliem. Without carry- 
ing over witli him one single person, he is now in a state of as perfect 
obscurity as if his name had never been known. Mr. J. Randolph is 
in the same track, and will end in the same way. His course has ex- 
cited considerable alarm. Timid men consider it as a proof of the 
weakness of our government, and that it is to be rent in pieces by 
demagogues and to end in anarchy. I survey the scene with a diflfer- 
ent eye, and draw a different augury from it. In a House of Repre- 
sentatives of a great mass of good sense, Mr. Randolph's popular elo- 
quence gave him such advantages as to place him unrivalled as the 
leader of the House ; and, although not conciliatory to those whom he 
led, principles of duty and patriotism induced many of them to swallow 
humiliations he subjected them to, and to vote as was right, as long as 
he kept the path of right himself The sudden departure of such a 
man could not but produce a momentary astonishment, and even dis- 
may ; but for a moment only. The good sense of the House rallied 
around its principles, and, without any leader, pursued steadily the busi- 
ness of the session, did it well, and by a strength of vote which has 

never before been seen The augury I draw from this is, that 

there is a steady good sense in the legislature and in the body of the 
nation, joined with good intentions, which will lead them to discern 
and to pursue the public good under all circumstances which can arise, 
and that no ignis fatuus will be able to lead them long astray." 

Mr. JefFerson predicted that the lost sheep of the Republican 
fold would wander off to the arid wastes of Federalism ; but he 
never did so. His defection was not an inconsistency, but a return 
to consistency. He presented himself in his true character 
thenceforth, which was that of a States' Rights fanatic. He op- 
posed the election of Mr. Madison to the Presidency, as he said, 
because Mr. Madison was weak on the sovereignty of the States. 
He opposed the war of 1812 for two reasons : — 1. Offensive 
war was in itself unconstitutional, being a national act. 2. War 
was nationalizing. A hundred times before the war, he foretold 
that, if war occurred, the sovereignty of the States was gone for- 
ever, and we should lapse into nationality. A thousand times 
after the war, he declared that this dread lapse had occurred. 
At a public dinner, after the return of peace, he gave the once 
celebrated toast, " States' Rights, — De mortuis nil nisi honum." 
As before the war he sometimes affected himself to tears while 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 203 

dwelling upon the sad prospect of kindred people imbruing their 
hands in one another's blood, so during the war he was one of the 
few American citizens who lamented the triumphs of their coun- 
try's arms. In his solitude at Roanoke he was cast down at the 
news of Perry's victory on the lake, because he thought it would 
prolong the contest ; and he exulted in the banishment of Napo- 
leon to Elba, although it let loose the armies and fleets of 
Britain upon the United States. " That insolent coward," said 
he, " has met his deserts at last." This Virginia Englishman 
would not allow that Napoleon possessed even military talent ; 
but stoutly maintained, to the last, that he was the merest sport 
of fortune. "When the work of restoration was in progress, under 
the leadership of Clay and Calhoun, John Randolph was in his 
element, for he could honestly oppose every movement and sug- 
gestion of those young orators, — national bank, protective tariff, 
internal improvements, everything. He was one of the small 
number who objected to the gift of land and money to Lafayette, 
and one of the stubborn minority who would have seen the Union 
broken up rather than assent to the Missouri Compromise, or to 
any Missouri compromise. The question at issue in all these 
measures, he maintained, was the same, and it was this : Are we 
a nation or a confederacy ? 

Talent, too, is apt to play the despot over the person that 
possesses it. This man had such a power of witty vituperation 
in him, with so decided a histrionic gift, that his rising to speak 
was always an interesting event ; and he would occasionally hold 
both the House and the galleries attentive for three or four 
hours. He became accustomed to this homage; he craved it; 
it became necessary to him. As far back as 1811, Washington 
Irving wrote of him, in one of his letters from Washington : 
" There is no speaker in either House that excites such universal 
attention as Jack Randolph. But they listen to him more to be 
delighted by his eloquence and entertained by his ingenuity and 
eccentricity, than to be convinced by sound doctrine and close 
argument." As he advanced in age, this habit of startling the 
House by unexpected dramatic exhibitions grew upon him. 
One of the most vivid pictures ever painted in words of a par- 



204: JOHN RANDOLPH. 

liamentary scene is that in which the late IMr. S. G. Goodrich 
records his recollection of one of these displays. It occurred in 
1820, durinc one of the Missouri debates. A tall man, with a 
little head and a small oval face, like that of an aged boy, rose 
and addressed the chairman. 

" He paused a moment," wrote Mr. Goodrich, " and I had time to 
study his appearance. His hair was jet-black, and clubbed in a queue ; 
his eye was black, small, and painfully penetrating. His complexion 
was a yellowish-brown, bespeaking Indian blood. I knew at once that 
it must be John Randolph. As he uttered the words, ' Mr. Speaker ! ' 
every member turned in his seat, and, facing him, gazed as if some 
portent bad suddenly appeared before them. 'Mr. Speaker,' said 
he, in a shrill voice, which, however, pierced every nook and corner of 
the hall, ' I have but one word to say, — one word, sir, and that is to 
state a fact. The measure to which the gentleman has just alluded 
originated in a dirty trick ! ' These were his precise words. The sub- 
ject to which he referred I did not gather, but the coolness and impu- 
dence of the speaker were admirable in their way. I never saw better 
acting, even in Kean. His look, his manner, his long arm, his elvish 
fore-finger, — like an exclamation-point, punctuating his bitter thought, 
— showed the skill of a master. The effect of the whole was to startle 
everybody, as if a pistol-shot had rung through the hall." — Recollec- 
tions, Vol. n. p. 395. 

Such anecdotes as these, which are very numerous, both in 
and out of print, convey an inadequate idea of his understand- 
ing ; for there was really a great fund of good sense in him and 
in his political creed. Actor as he was, he was a very honest 
man, and had a hearty contempt for all the kinds of falsehood 
which he had no inclination to commit. No man was more res- 
tive under debt than he, or has better depicted its horroi'S. 
Speaking once of those Virginia families who gave banquets and 
kept up expensive establishments, while their estates were cov- 
ered all over with mortgages, he said : " I always think I can see 
the anguish under the grin and grimace, like old Mother Cole's 
dirty flannel peeping out beneath her Brussels lace." He was 
strong in the opinion that a man who is loose in money matters 
is not trustworthy in anything, — .an opinion which is shared by 
every one who knows either life or history. " The time was," 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 205 

he wrote, " when I was fool enough to believe that a man might 
be negligent of pecuniary obligations, and yet be a very good fel- 
low ; but long experience has convinced me that he who is lax in 
this respect is utterly unworthy of trust in any other." lie dis- 
criminated well between those showy, occasional acts of so-called 
generosity which such men perform, and the true, habitual, self- 
denying benevolence of a solvent and just member of society. 
" Despise the usurer and the miser as much as you will," he 
would exclaim, "but the spendthrift is more selfish than they." 
But his very honesty was most curiously blended with his torj'ism. 
One of his friends relates the following anecdote : — 

" Just before we sailed, the Washington papers were received, an- 
nouncing the defeat of the Bankrupt Bill by a small majority. At 
that moment, I forgot that Randolph had been one of its most deter- 
mined opponents, and I spoke with the feelings of a merchant when I 
said to him, — 

" ' Have you heard the very bad news from Washington this 
morning ? ' 

" ' No, sir,' repUed he, with eagerness ; ' what is it ? ' 

" ' Why, sir, I am sorry to tell you that the House of Representa- 
tives has thrown out the Bankrupt Bill by a small majority.' 

" ' Sorry, sir ! ' exclaimed he ; and then, taking off his hat and look- 
ing upwards, he added, most emphatically, ' Thank God for all his 
mercies ! ' 

" After a short pause he continued : ' How delighted I am to think 
that I helped to give that hateful bill a kick. Yes, sir, this very day 
week I spoke for three hours against it, and my friends, who forced me 
to make the effort, were good enough to say that I never had made a 
more successful speech ; it mast have had some merit, sir ; for I assure 
you, whilst I was speaking, although the Northern mail was announced, 
not a single member left his seat to look for letters, — a circumstance 
which had not occurred before during the session ! ' 

" I endeavored to combat his objections to a Bankrupt Bill subse- 
quently, but, of course, without any success : he felt as a planter, and 
teas very jealous of the influence of merchants as legislators." 

There are flashes of sense and touches of pathos in some of 
his most tory passages. As he was delivering in the House one 
of his empliatic predictions of the certain failure of our experi- 
ment of freedom on this continent, he broke into an apology for 



206 JOHN KANDOLPH. 

SO doing, that brought tears to many eyes. " It Is an infirmity 
of my nature," said he, " to have an obstinate constitutional pref- 
erence of the true over the agreeable ; and I am satisfied, that, 
if I had had an only son, or what is dearer, an only daughter, — 
which God forbid ! — I say, God forbid, for she might bring her 
father's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave ; she might break 
my heart, or worse than that — what ? Can anything be worse 
than that? Yes, sir, I might break hers!" His fable, too, of 
the caterpillar and the horseman was conceived in arrogance, but 
it was pretty and effective. Every tory intellect on earth is 
pleased to discourse in that way of the labors of the only men 
who greatly help their species, — the patient elaborators of truth. 
A caterpillar, as we learn from this fable, had crawled slowly 
over a fence, which a gallant horseman took at a single leap. 
" Stop," says the caterpillar, "you are too flighty ; you want con- 
nection and continuity ; it took me an hour to get over ; you 
can't be as sure as I am that you have really overcome the 
difficulty, and are indeed over the fence." To which, of course, 
the gallant horseman makes the expected contemptuous reply. 
This is precisely in the spirit of Carlyle's sneers at the politi- 
cal economists, — the men who are not content to sit down and 
howl in this wilderness of a modern world, but bestir them- 
selves to discover methods by which it can be made less a wil- 
derness. 

There is so much truth in the doctrines of the original States' 
Rights party, — the party of Jefferson, Madison, and Patrick 
Henry, — that a very commonplace man, who learned his politics 
in that school, is able to make a respectable figure in the public 
counsels. The mere notion that government, being a necessary 
evil, is to be reduced to the minimum that will answer the pur- 
poses of government, saves from many false steps. The doctrine 
that the central government is to confine itself to the duties as- 
signed it in the Constitution, is a guiding principle suited to the 
limited human mind. A vast number of claims, suggestions, and 
petitions are excluded by it even from consideration. If an elo- 
quent Hamiltonian proposes to appropriate the public money for 
the purpose of enabling American manufacturers to exhibit their 



JOHN EANDOLPH. 207 

products at a Paris Exhibition, the plainest country member of 
the Jcffcrsonian school perceives at once the inconsistency of such 
a proposition with the fundamental principle of his political creed. 
He has a compass to steer by, and a port to sail to, instead of 
being afloat on the waste of waters, the sport of every breeze 
that blows. It is touching to observe that this unhappy, sick, and 
sometimes mad John Randolph, amid all the vagaries of his later 
life, had always a vein of soundness in him, derived from his 
early connection with the enlightened men who acted in politics 
with Thomas Jefferson. The phrase " masterly inactivity " is 
Randolph's ; and it is something only to have given convenient 
expression to a system of conduct so often wise. He used to say 
that Congress could scarcely do too little. His ideal of a session 
was one in which members should make speeches till every man 
had fully expressed and perfectly relieved his mind, then pass 
the appropriation bills, and go home. And we ought not to 
forgot that, when President John Quincy Adams brought for- 
ward his schemes for covering the continent with magnificent 
works at the expense of the treasury of the United States, and 
of uniting the republics of both Americas into a kind of holy 
alliance, it was Randolph's piercing sarcasm which, more than 
anything else, made plain to new members the fallacy, the peril, 
of such a system. His opposition to this wild federalism in- 
volved his support of Andrew Jackson ; but there was no other 
choice open to him. 

Seldom did he display in Congress so much audacity and in- 
genuity as in defending General Jackson while he was a candi- 
date for the Presidency against Mr. Adams. The two objections 
oftenest urged against .Jackson were that he was a military chief- 
tain, and that he could not spell. Mr. Randolph discoursed on 
these two points in a most amusing manner, displaying all the im- 
pudence and ignorance of the tory, inextricably mingled with the 
good sense and wit of the man. " General Jackson cannot write," 
said a friend. « Granted," replied he. " General Jackson can- 
not write because he was never taught ; but his competitor 
cannot write because he was not teachable." He made a bold 
remark in one of his Jacksouian harangues. " The talent which 



208 JOHN EANDOLPH. 

enables a man to write a book or make a speech has no more 
relation to the leading of an army or a senate, than it has to the 
dressing of a dinner." He pronounced a fine eulogium on the 
Duke of Marlborough, one of the worst spellers in Europe, and 
then asked if gentlemen would have had that illustrious man 
"superseded by a Scotch schoolmaster." It was in the same 
ludicrous harangue that he uttered his famous joke upon those 
schools in which young ladies Avere said to be " finished." " Yes," 
he exclaimed, '■^finished indeed ; finished for all the duties of a 
wife, or mother, or mistress of a family." Again he said : " There 
is much which it becomes a second-rate man to know, which a first- 
rate man ought to be ashamed to know. No head was ever clear 
and sound that was stuffed with book-learning. My friend, W. 
R. Johnson, has many a groom that can clean and dress a race- 
horse, and ride him too, better than he can." He made the 
sweeping assertion, that no man had ever presided over a govern- 
ment with advantage to the country governed, who had not in 
him the making of a good general ; for, said he, " the talent for 
government lies in these two things, — sagacity to perceive, and 
decision to act." Really, when we read this ingenious apology 
for, or rather eulogy of, ignorance, we cea«e to wonder that Gen- 
eral Jackson should have sent him to Russia. 

The religious life of Randolph is a most curious study. He 
experienced in his lifetime four religious changes, or conversions. 
His gentle mother, whose name he seldom uttered without add- 
ing with tender emphasis, " God bless her ! " was such a member 
of the Church of England as gentle ladies used to be before an 
" Evangelical " party was known in it. She taught his infant 
lips to pray ; and, being naturally trustful and affectionate, he 
was not an unapt pupil. But in the library of the old mansion 
on the Appomattox, in which he passed his forming years, there 
was a " wagon-load " of what he terms " French infidelity," 
though it appears there were almost as many volumes of Hobbes, 
Shaftesbury, Collins, Hume, and Gibbon, as there were of 
Diderot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, and Voltaire. These works he 
read in boyhood ; and when he came to mingle among men, he 
found that the opinions of such authors prevailed in the circles 



JOHN EANDOLPH. 209 

which he most frequented. Just as he, a natural tory, caught 
some tincture of republicanism from Jefferson and his friends, so 
he, the natural believer, adopted the fashion of scepticism, which 
then ruled the leading minds of all lands ; and just as he lapsed 
back into toryism when the spell which drew him away from it 
had spent its force, so he became, in the decline of his powers, a 
prey to religious terrors. For twenty-two years, as we have 
said, he held aloof from religion, its ministers, and its temples. 
The disease that preyed upon him so sharpened his temper, and 
so perverted his perceptions of character, that, one after another, 
he alienated all the friends and relations with whom he oujrht to 
have lived ; and he often found himself, between the sessions of 
Congress, the sole white tenant of his lonely house at Roanoke, — 
the sick and solitary patriarch of a family of three liundred per- 
sons. He sought to alleviate this horrid solitude by adopting 
and rearing the orphaned sons of old friends ; to whom, when he 
was himself, he was the most affectionate and generous of guar- 
dians. But even they could not very long endure him ; for, in 
his adverse moods, he was incarnate Distrust, and, having con- 
ceived a foul suspicion, his genius enabled him to give it such 
withering expression that it was not in the nature of a young 
man to pass it by as the utterance of transient madness. So they 
too left him, and he was utterly alone in the midst of a crowd of 
black dependants. We see from his letters, that, while he saw 
the impossibility of his associating with his species, he yet longed 
and pined for their society and love. Perhaps there never lived 
a more unhappy person. Revering women, and formed to find 
his happiness in domestic life, he was incapable of being a hus- 
band ; and if this had not been the case, no woman could have 
lived with him. Yearning for companionship, but condemned to 
be alone, his solace was the reflection that, so long as there was 
no one near him, he was a torment only to himself " Often," he 
writes in one of his letters, " I mount my horse and sit upon him 
for ten or fifteen minutes, wishing to go somewhere, but not 
knowing where to ride ; for I would escape anywhere from the 
incubus that weighs me down, body and soul ; but the fiend fol- 
lows me en croupe The strongest considerations of duty 

N 



210 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

are barely sufficient to prevent me from absconding to some dis- 
tant country, where I might live and die unknown." 

A mind in such a state as this is the natural prey of super- 
stition. A dream, he used to say, first recalled his mind to the 
consideration of religion. This was about the year 1810, at the 
height of those hot debates that preceded the war of 1812. For 
nine years, he tells us, the subject gradually gained upon him, so 
that, at last, it was his first thought in the morning and his last at 
night. From the atheism upon which he had formerly plumed 
himself, he went to the opposite extreme. For a long time he 
was plunged into the deepest gloom, regarding himself as a sinner 
too vile to be forgiven. He sought for comfort in the Bible, in 
the Prayer-book, in conversation and correspondence with re- 
ligious friends, in the sermons of celebrated preachers. He 
formed a scheme of retirintj from the world into some kind of 
religious retreat, and spending the rest of his life in prayers and 
meditation. Rejecting this as a cowardly desertion of the post 
of duty, he had thoughts of setting up a school for children, and 
becoming himself a teacher in it. This plan, too, he laid aside, 
as savoring of enthusiasm. Meanwhile, this amiable and honest 
gentleman, whose every error was fairly attributable to the natu- 
ral limitations of his mind or to the diseases that racked his body, 
was tormented by remorse, which would have been excessive if 
he had been a pirate. He says that, after three years of contin- 
ual striving, he still dared not partake of the Communion, feeling 
himself " unworthy." " I was present," he writes, " when Mr. 
Hoge invited to the table, and I would have given all I was 
worth to have been able to approach it." Some inkling of his 
condition, it appears, became known to the public, and excited 
great good-will towards him on the part of many persons of similar 
belief. 

Some of his letters written during this period contain an almost 
ludicrous mixture of truth and extravagance. Pie says in one of 
them, that his heart has been softened, and he " thinks he has 
succeeded in forgiving all his enemies"; then he adds, "There is 
not a human being that I would hurt if it were in my power, — 
not even Bonaparte." In another place he remarks that the 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 211 

■world is a vast mad-house, and, " if what is to come be anything 
like what has passed, it would be wise to abandon the hulk to the 
underwriters, — the worms." In the whole of his intercourse 
with mankind, he says he never met with but three persons whom 
he did not, on getting close to their hearts, discover to be unhap- 
py ; and they were the only three he had ever known who had 
a religion. He expresses this truth in language which limits it 
to one form or kind of religion, the kind which he heard expound- 
ed in the churches of Virginia in 1819. Give it broader expres- 
sion, and every observer of human life will assent to it. It is 
indeed most true, that no human creature gets much out of life 
who has no religion, no sacred object, to the furtherance of which 
bis powers are dedicated. 

He obtained some relief at length, and became a regular com- 
municant of the Episcopal Church. But although he ever after 
manifested an extreme regard for religious things and persons, 
and would never permit either to be spoken against in his pres- 
ence without rebuke, he was very far from edifying his brethren 
by a consistent walk. At Washington, in the debates, he was as 
incisive and uncharitable as before. His denunciations of the 
second President Adams's personal character were as outrageous 
as his condemnation of parts of his policy was just. Mr. Clav, 
though removed from the arena of debate by his appointment lo 
the Department of State, was still the object of his bitter sarcasm ; 
and at length he included the President and the Secretary in that 
merciless philippic in which he accused Mr. Clay of forgery, 
and styled the coalition of Adams and Clay as " the combination 
of the Puritan and the Blackleg." He used language, too, in 
the course of tliis speech, which was understood to be a defiance 
to mortal combat, and it was so reported to Mr. Clay. The re- 
porters, however, misunderstood him, as it was not his intention 
nor his desire to fight. Nevertheless, to the astonishment and 
sorrow of his religious friends, he accepted Mr. Clay's challenge 
with the utmost possible promptitude, and bore himself through- 
out the affair like (to use the poor, lying, tory cant of the last 
generation) " a high-toned Virginia gentleman." Colonel Benton 
tells us that Mr. Randolph invented an ingenious excuse for the 



212 - JOHN RANDOLPH. 

enormous inconsistency of his conduct on this occasion. A duel, 
he maintained, was private war, and was justifiable on the same 
ground as a w^ar between two nations. Both were lamentable, 
but both were allowable when there was no other way of getting 
redress for insults and injuries. This was plausible, but it did 
not deceive him. He knew very well that his offensive language 
respecting a man whom he really esteemed was wholly devoid of 
excuse. He had the courage requisite to expiate the offence by 
standing before Mr. Clay's pistol ; but he could not stand before 
his countrymen and confess that his abominable antithesis was 
but the spurt of mingled ill-temper and the vanity to shine. Any 
good tory can fight a duel with a respectable degree of com- 
posure ; but to own one's self, in the presence of a nation, to have 
outraged the feelings of a brother-man, from the desire to startle 
and amuse an audience, requires the kind of valor which tories 
do not know. " Whig and tory," says Mr. Jefferson, " belong to 
natural history." But then there is such a thing, we are told, 
as the regeneration of the natural man ; and we believe it, and 
cling to it as a truth destined one day to be resuscitated and pu- 
rified from- the mean interpretations which have made the very 
word sickening to the intelligence of Christendom. Mr. Ran- 
dolph had not achieved the regeneration of his nature. He was 
a tory still. In the testing hour, the " high-toned Virginia gen- 
tleman" carried the day, without a struggle, over the communicant. 
During the last years of his life, the monotony of his anguish 
was relieved by an occasional visit to the Old World. It is in- 
teresting to note how thoroughly at home he felt himself among 
the English gentry, and how promptly they recognized him as a 
man and a brother. He was, as we have remarked, more Eng- 
lish than an Englishman ; for England does advance, though 
slowly, from the insular to the universal. Dining at a great 
house in London, one evening, he dwelt with pathetic eloquence 
upon the decline of Virginia. Being asked what he thought was 
the reason of her decay, he startled and pleased the lords and 
ladies present by attributing it all to the repeal of the law of pri- 
mogeniture. One of the guests tells us that this was deemed " a 
strange remark from a Repuhlican" and that, before the party 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 213 

broke up, the company had " almost taken him for an aristocrat." 
It happened sometimes, when he was conversing with English 
politicians, that it was the American who defended the English 
system against the attacks of Englishmen ; and so full of British 
prejudice was he, that, in Paris, he protested that a decent dinner 
could not be bought for money. Westminster Abbey woke all 
his veneration. He went into it, one morning, just as service 
w^as about beginning, and took his place among the worshippers. 
Those of our readers who have attended the morning service at 
an English cathedral on a week-day cannot have forgotten the 
ludicrous smallness of the congregation compared with the impos- 
ing array of official assistants. A person who has a little tincture 
of the Yankee in him may even find himself wondering how it 
can " pay " the British empire to employ half a dozen reverend 
clergymen and a dozen robust singers to aid seven or eight unim- 
portant members of the community in saying their prayers. But 
John Randolph of Roanoke had not in him the least infusion of 
Yankee. Standing erect in the almost vacant space, he uttered 
the responses in a tone that was in startling contrast to the low 
mumble of the clergyman's voice, and that rose above the melo- 
dious amens of the choir. He took it all in most serious earnest. 
When the service was over, he said to his companion, after la- 
menting the hasty and careless manner in which the service had 
been performed, that he esteemed it an honor to have worshipped 
God in Westminster Abbey. As he strolled among the tombs, 
he came, at last, to the grave of two men who had often roused 
bis enthusiasm. He stopped, and spoke : " I will not say, Take 
off your shoes, for the ground on which you stand is holy ; but, 
look, sir, do you see those simple letters on the flagstones beneath 
your feet, — W. P. and C. J. F. Here lie, side by side, the re- 
mains of the two great rivals, Pitt and Fox, whose memory so 
completely lives in history. No marble monuments are neces- 
sary to mark the spot where their bodies repose. There is more 
simple grandeur in those few letters than in all the surrounding 
monuments, sir." How more than English was all this! Eng- 
land had been growing away from and beyond Westminster 
Abbey, William Pitt, and Charles James Fox ; but this Virginia 



214 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

Englishman, living alone in his woods, with his slaves and his 
overseers, severed from the progressive life of his race, was liv- 
ing still in the days when a pair of dissolute young orators could 
be deemed, and with some reason too, the most important persons 
in a great empire. A friend asked him how he was pleased with 
England. He answered with enthusiasm, — " There never was 
such a country on the face of the earth as England, and it is 
utterly impossible that there can be any combination of circum- 
stances hereafter to make such another country as Old England 
now is ! " 

We ought not to have been surprised at the sympathy which 
the English Tories felt during the late war for their brethren in 
the Southern States of America. It was as natural as it was for 
the English Protestants to welcome the banished Husiuenots. It 
was as natural as it was for Louis XIV. to give an asylum to tlie 
Stuarts. The traveller who should have gone, seven years ago, 
straight from an English agricultural county to a cotton district 
of South Carolina, or a tobacco county of Virginia, would have 
felt that the differences between the two places were merely ex- 
ternal. The system in both places and the spirit of both were 
strikingly similar. In the old parts of Virginia, the Carolinas, 
Tennessee, and Kentucky, you had only to get ten miles from 
a railroad to find yourself among people who were English in 
their feelings, opinions, habits, and even in their accent. New 
England differs from Old England, because New England has 
grown : Virginia was English, because she had been stationary. 
Happening to be somewhat familiar with the tone of feeling in 
the South, — the real South, or, in other words, the South ten 
miles from a railroad, — we were fully prepared for Mr. Rus- 
sell's statement with regard to the desire so frequently expressed 
in 1861 for one of the English princes to come and reign over a 
nascent Confederacy. Sympathies and antipathies are always 
mutual when they are natural ; and never was there a sympathy 
more in accordance with the nature of things, than that which so 
quickly manifested itself between the struggling Southei-n people 
and the majority of the ruling classes of Great Britain. 

Mr. Randolph took leave of public life, after thirty years of 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 215 

service, not in the most dignified manner. He furnislied anotlier 
illustration of tlie trutli of a remai'Ic made by a certain queen of 
Denmark, — " The lady doth protest too much." Like many 
other gentlemen in independent circumstances, he had been par- 
ticularly severe upon those of his fellow-citizens who earned tlieir 
subsistence by serving the public. It pleased him to speak of 
members of the Cabinet as " the drudges of the departments," 
and to hold gentlemen in the diplomatic service up to contempt 
as forming " the tail of the corps diplomatique in Europe." He 
liked to declaim upon the enormous impossibility of his ever ex- 
changing a seat in Congress for " the shabby splendors " of an 
office in Washington, or in a foreign mission "to dance attendance 
abroad instead of at home." When it was first buzzed about in 
Washington, in 1830, that General Jackson had tendered the 
Russian mission to John Randolph, the rumor was not credited. 
An appointment so exquisitely absurd was supposed to be beyond 
even Andrew Jackson's audacity. The offer had been made, 
however. Mr. Randolph's brilliant defence of General Jackson's 
bad spelling, together with Mr. Van Buren's willingness to place 
an ocean between the new administration and a master of sar- 
casm, to whom opposition had become an unchangeable habit, had 
dictated an offer of the mission, couched in such seductive lan- 
guage that Mr. Randolph yielded to it as readily as those ladies 
accept an offer of marriage who have often announced their inten- 
tion never to marry. Having reached the scene of his diplomatic 
labors at the beginning of August, he began to perform them with 
remarkable energy. In a suit of black, the best, he declared, that 
London could furnish, he was presented to the Emperor and to the 
Empress, having first submitted his costume to competent inspec- 
tion. Resolute to do his whole duty, he was not content to send 
his card to the diplomatic corps, but, having engaged a handsome 
coach and four, he called upon each member of the diplomatic body, 
from the ambassadors to the secretaries of legation. Having per- 
formed these labors, and having discovered that a special object 
with which he was charged could not then be accomplished, he 
had leisure to observe that St. Petersburg, in the month of Au- 
gust, is not a pleasant residence to an invalid of sixty. He de- 
scribes the climate in these terms : — 



216 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

" Heat, dust impalpable, pervading every part and pore. . . . Insects 
of all nauseous descrii^tions, bugs, fleas, mosquitoes, flies innumerable, 
gigantic as the empire they inhabit, who will take no denial. This is 
the land of Phai-aoh and his plagues, — Egypt and its ophthalmia and 
vermin, without its fertility, — Holland, without its wealth, improve- 
ments, or cleanliness." 

He endured St. Petersburg for the space of ten days, then 
sailed for England, and never saw Eussia again. When the ap- 
propriation bill was before Congress at the next session, opposi- 
tion members did not fail to call in question the justice of requir- 
ing the people of tlie United States to pay twenty thousand dol- 
lars for ]Mr. Randolph's ten days' work, or, to speak more exactly, 
for Mr. Randolph's apology for the President's bad spelling ; but 
the item passed, nevertheless. During the reign of Andrew 
Jackson, Congress was litile more than a board of registry for the 
formal recording of his edicts. There are those who think, at the 
present moment, that what a President hath done, a President 
may do again. 

It was fortunate that John Randolph was in retirement when 
Calhoun brought on his Nullification scheme. The presence in 
Congress of a man so eloquent and so reckless, whose whole 
heart and mind were with the Nulllfiers, might have prevented 
the bloodless postponement of the struggle. He was in con- 
stant correspondence with the South Carolina leaders, and was 
fully convinced that it was the President of the United States, 
not "the Hamiltons and Haynes " of South Carolina, who ought 
to seize the first pretext to concede the point in dispute. No cit- 
izen of South Carolina was more indignant than he at General 
Jackson's Proclamation. He said that, if the people did not 
rouse themselves to a sense of their condition, and " put down 
this wretched old man," the country was irretrievably ruined ; 
and he spoke of the troops despatched to Charleston as " merce- 
naries," to whom he hoped " no quarter would be given." The 
" wretched old man " whom the people were to " put down " was 
Andrew Jackson, not John C. Calhoun. 

We do not forget that, when John Randolph uttered these 
words, he was scarcely an accountable being. Disease bad re- 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 217 

duced him to a skeleton, and robbed liim of almost every attri- 
bute of man except his capacity to suffer. But even in his mad- 
ness he was a representative man, and spoke the latent feeling 
of his class. The diseases which sharpened his temper unloosed 
his tongue ; he revealed the tendency of the Southern mind, as a 
petulant child reveals family secrets. In his good and in his evil 
he was an exaggerated Southerner of the higher class. He was 
like them, too, in this : they are not criminals to be punished, but 
patients to be cured. Sometimes, of late, we have feared that 
they resemble him also in being incurable. 

As long as Americans take an interest in the history of their 
country, they will read with interest the strange story of this sick 
and suffering representative of sick and suffering Virginia. To 
the last, old Virginia wore her ragged robes with a kind of gran- 
deur which was not altogether unbecoming, and which to the 
very last imposed upon tory minds. Scarcely any one could 
live among the better Southern people without liking them ; and 
few will ever read Hugh Garland's Life of John Randolph, with- 
out more than forgiving all his vagaries, impetuosities, and foibles. 
How often, upon riding away from a Southern home, have we 
been ready to exclaim, " What a pity such good people should be 
so accursed ! " Lord Russell well characterized the evil to which 
we allude as " that fatal gift of the poisoned garment which was 
fluno; around them from the first hour of their establishment." 

The last act of John Randolph's life, done when he lay dying 
at a hotel in Philadelphia, in June, 1833, was to express once 
more his sense of this blighting system. Some years before, he 
had made a will by which all his slaves were to be freed at his . 
death. He would probably have given them their fi-eedom be- 
fore his death, but for the fact, too evident, that freedom to a 
black man in a Slave State was not a boon. The slaves freed 
by his brother, forty years before, had not done well, because (as 
he supposed) no land had been bequeathed for their support. 
Accordingly, he left directions in his will that a tract of land, 
which might be of four thousand acres, should be set apart for the 
maintenance of his slaves, and that they should be transported 
to it and established upon it at the expense of his estate. " I 

10 



218 JOHN KANDOLPH. 

give my slaves tlieir freedom," said he in his will, " to which my 
conscience tells me they are justly entitled." On the last day of 
his life, surrounded by strangers, and attended by two of his old 
servants, his chief concern was to make distinctly known to as 
many persons as possible that it was really his will that his slaves 
should be free. Knowing, as he did, the aversion which his fel- 
low-citizens had to the emancipation of slaves, and even to the 
presence in the State of free blacks, he seemed desirous of taking 
away every pretext for breaking his will. A few hours before 
his death, he said to the physician in attendance : " I confirm 
every disposition in my will, especially that concerning my slaves 
whom I have manumitted, and for whom I have made provision." 
The doctor, soon after, took leave of him, and was about to de- 
part. " You must not go," said he, " you cannot, you shall not 
leave me." Pie told his servant not to let the doctor go, and 
the man immediately locked the door and put the key in his pock- 
et. The doctor remonstrating, Mr. Randolph explained, that, 
by the laws of Virginia, in order to manumit slaves by will, it 
vras requisite that the master should declare his will in that par- 
ticular in the presence of a white witness, who, after hearing the 
declaration, must never lose sight of the party until he is dead. 
The doctor consented, at length, to remain, but urged that more 
witnesses should be sent for. This was done. At ten in the 
morning, four gentlemen were ranged in a semicii'cle round his 
bed. He was propped up almost in a sitting posture, and a blan- 
ket was wrapped round his head and shoulders. His face was 
yellow, and extremely emaciated ; he was very weak, and it re- 
quired all the remaining energy of his mind to endure the exer- 
tion he was about to make. It was evident to all present that 
his whole soul was in the act, and his eye gathered fire as he 
performed it. Pointing toward the witnesses with that gesture 
which for so many years had been familiar to the House of Rep- 
resentatives, he said, slowly and distinctly : " I confirm all the 
directions in my will respecting my slaves, and direct them to Le 
enforced, particularl}'- in regard to a provision for their support." 
Then, raising his hand and placing it upon the shoulder of his 
servant, he added, " Especially for this man." Having performed 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 219 

this act, his mind appeared relieved, but his strength immediate- 
ly left him, and in two hours he breathed his last. 

The last of the Randolphs, and one of the best representatives 
of the original masters of Virginia, the high-toned Virginia gentle- 
man, was no more. Those men had their opportunity, but they 
had not strength of character equal to it. They were tried and 
found wanting. The universe, which loves not the high-toned, 
even in violins, disowned them, and they perished. Cut off from 
the life-giving current of thought and feeling which kept the rest 
of Christendom advancing, they came to love stagnation, and 
looked out from their dismal, isolated pool with lofty contempt at 
the gay and active life on the flowing stream. They were not 
teachable, for they despised the men who could have taught 
them. But we are bound always to consider that they were sub- 
jected to a trial under which human virtue has always given 
way, and will always. Sudden wealth is itself sufficient to spoil 
any but the very best men, — those who can instantly set it at 
work for the general good, and continue to earn an honest liveli- 
hood by faithful labor. But those tobacco lords of Virginia, be- 
sides making large fortunes in a few years, were the absolute, 
irresponsible masters of a submissive race. And when these two 
potent causes of effeminacy and pride had worked out their prop- 
er result in the character of the masters, then, behold ! their 
resources fail. Vicious agriculture exhausts the soil, fidse politi- 
cal economy prevents the existence of a middle class, and the 
presence of slaves repels emigration. Proud, ignorant, indolent, 
dissolute, and in debt, the dominant families, one after another, 
passed away, attesting to the last, by an occasional vigorous shoot, 
the original virtue of the stock. All this poor John Randolph 
represented and was. 

Virginia remains. Better men will live in it than have ever 
yet lived there ; but it will not be in this century, and possibly 
not in the next. It cannot be that so fair a province will not be 
one day inhabited by a race of men who will work according to 
the laws of nature, and whom, therefore, the laws of nature will 
co-operate with and preserve. How superior will such Virgini- 
ans be to what Dr. Francis Lieber styles the '' provincial ego- 
tism" of State sovereignty ! 



STEPHEN GIRARD 



AND HIS COLLEGE 




STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 



TITHIN the memory of many persons still alive, "old 
Girai'd," as the famous banker was usually styled, a 
short, stout, brisk old gentleman, used to walk, in his swift, 
awkward way, the streets of the lower part of Philadelphia. 
Though everything about him indicated that he had very little in 
common with his fellow-citizens, he was the marked man of the 
city for more than a generation. His aspect was rather insig- 
nificant and quite unprepossessing. His dress was old-fashioned 
and shabby ; and he wore the pig-tail, the white neck-cloth, the 
wide-brimmed hat, and the large-skirted coat of the last century. 
He was blind of one eye ; and though his bushy eyebrows gave 
some character to his countenance, it was curiously devoid of 
expression. He had also the absent look of a man who either 
had no thoughts or was absorbed in thought ; and he shuffled 
along on his enormous feet, looking neither to the right nor to 
the left. There was always a certain look of the old mariner 
about him, though he had been fifty years an inhabitant of the 
town. When he rode it was in the plainest, least comfortable 
gig in Philadelphia, drawn by an ancient and ill-formed horse, 
di-iven always by the master's own hand at a good pace. He 
chose still to live whei-e he had lived for fifty years, in Water 
Street, close to the wharves, in a small and inconvenient house, 
darkened by tall storehouses, amid the bustle, the noise, and the 
J odors of commerce. His sole pleasure was to visit once a day a 

( little farm which he possessed a few miles out of town, where he 

was wont to take off his coat, roll up his shirt-sleeves, and per- 
sonally labor in the field and in the barn, hoeing corn, pruning 
trees, tossing hay, and not disdiiining even to assist in butchering 



224: STEPHEN GIRARD 

the animals wliich he raised for market. It was no mere orna- 
mental or experimental farm. He made it pay. All of its prod- 
uce was carefully, nay, scrupulously husbanded, sold, recorded, 
and accounted for. He loved his grapes, his plums, his pigs, and 
especially his rare breed of Canary-birds; but the people of 
Philadelphia had the full benefit of their increase, — at the high- 
est market rates. 

Many feared, many served, but none loved this singular and 
lonely old man. If there was among the very few who habitually 
conversed with him one who understood and esteemed him, there 
was but one ; and he was a man of such abounding charity, that, 
like Uncle Toby, if he had heard that the Devil was hopelessly 
damned, he would have said, '' I am sorry for it." Never was 
there a person more destitute than Girard of the qualities Avhich 
win the affection of others. His temper was violent, his presence 
forbidding, his usual manner ungracious, his will inflexible, his 
heart untender, his imagination dead. He was odious to many 
of his fellow-citizens, who considered him the hardest and mean- 
est of men. He had lived among them for half a century, but 
he was no more a Philadelphian in 1830 than in 1776. He still 
spoke with a French accent, and accompanied his Avords with a 
French shrug and French gesticulation. Surrounded with Chris- 
tian churches which he had helped to build, he remained a sturdy 
unbeliever, and possessed the complete works of only one man, 
Voltaire. He made it a point of duty to labor on Sunday, as a 
good example to others. He made no secret of the fact, that he 
considered the idleness of Sunday an injury to the people, moral 
and economical. He would have opened his bank on Sundays, 
if any one would have come to it. For his part, he required no 
rest, and would have none. He never travelled. He never at- 
tended public assemblies or amusements. He had no affections 
to gratify, no friends to visit, no curiosity to appease, no tastes to 
indulge. What he once said of himself appeared to be true, that 
he rose in the morning with but a single object, and that was to 
labor so hard all day as to be able to sleep all night. The world 
was absolutely nothing to him but a working-place. He scorned 
and scouted the opinion, that old men should cease to labor, and 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 225 

should spend the evening of their days in tranquillity. " No," he 
would say, " labor is the price of life, its happiness, its every- 
thing ; to rest is to rust ; every man should labor to the last hour 
of his ability." Such was Stephen Giracd, the richest man who 
ever lived in Pennsylvania. 

This is an unpleasing picture of a citizen of polite and amiable 
Philadelphia. It were indeed a grim and dreary world in which 
should prevail the principles of Girard. But see what this man 
has done for the city that loved him not ! ' Vast and imposing 
structures rise on the banks of the Schuylkill, wherein, at this 
hour, six hundred poor orphan boys are fed, clothed, trained, and 
taught, upon the income of the enormous estate which he won by 
this entire consecration to the work of accumulating property. In 
the ample grounds of Girard College, looking up at its five mass- 
ive marble edifices, strolling in its shady walks or by its verdant 
play-grounds, or listening to the cheerful cries of the boys at 
play, the most sympathetic and imaginative of men must pause 
before censuring the sterile and unlovely life of its founder. And 
if he should inquire closely into the character and career of the 
man who willed this great institution into being, he would per- 
haps be willing to admit that there was room in the world for 
one Girard, though it were a pity there should ever be another. 
Such an inquiry would perhaps disclose that Stephen Girard was 
endowed by nature with a great heart as well as a powerful 
mind, and that circumstances alone closed and hardened the one, 
cramped and perverted the other. It is not improbable that he 
was one of those unfortunate beings who desire to be loved, but 
whose temper and appearance combine to repel affection. His 
marble statue, which adorns the entrance to the principal build- 
ing, if it could speak, might say to us, " Living, you could not 
understand nor love me ; dead, I compel at least your respect." 
Indeed, he used to say, when questioned as to his career, " Wait 
till I am dead ; my deeds will show what I was." 

Girard's recollections of his childhood were tinged with bitter- 
ness. lie was born at Bordeaux in 1750. He was the eldest 
of the five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of sub- 
stance and respectability. He used to complain that, while his 
10* o 



226 STEPHEN GIRARD 

younger brothers were taught at college, his own education was 
neglected, and that he acquired at home little more than the abil- 
ity to read and write. He remembered, too, that at the age of 
eight years he discovered, to his shame and sorrow, that one of 
his eyes was blind, — a circumstance that exposed him to the 
taunts of his companions. The influence of a personal defect, 
and of the ridicule it occasions, upon the character of a sensitive 
child, can be understood only by those whose childhood was em- 
bittered from that cause ; but such cases as those of Byron and 
Girard should teach those who have the charge of youth the 
crime it is to permit such defects to be the subject of remark. 
Girard also early lost his mother, an event which soon brought 
him under the sway of a step-mother. Doubtless he was a wil- 
ful, arbitrary, and irascible boy, since we know that he was a wil- 
ful, arbitrary, and irascible man. Before he was fourteen, having 
chosen the profession of his father, he left home, with his father's 
consent, and went to sea in the capacity of cabin-boy. He used 
to boast, late in life, that he began the world with sixpence in his 
pocket. Quite enough for a cabin-boy. 

For nine years he sailed between Bordeaux and the French 
"West Indies, returning at length with the rank of first mate, or, 
as the French term it, lieutenant of his vessel. He had well im- 
proved his time. Some of tlie defects of his early education he 
had supplied by study, and it is evident that he had become a 
skilful navigator. It Avas then the law of France that no man 
should command a vessel who was not twenty-five years old, and 
had not sailed two cruises in a ship of the royal navy. Girard 
was but twenty-three, and had sailed in none but merchant-ves- 
sels. His father, however, had influence enough to procure him 
a dispensation ; and in 1773 he was licensed to command. He 
appears to have been scarcely just to his father when he wrote, 
sixty-three years after : " I have the proud satisfaction of know- 
ing that my conduct, my labor, and my economy have enabled 
me to do one hundred times more for my relations than they all 
together have ever done for me since the day of my birth." In 
the mere amount of money expended, this may have been true ; 
but it is the start toward fortune that is so diflicult. His father, 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 227 

besides procuring the dispensation, assisted him to purchase goods 
for his first commercial venture. At the age of twenty-four, we 
find him saihng to the West Indies ; not indeed in command of 
the vessel, but probably as mate and supercargo, and part owner 
of goods to tlie value of three thousand dollars. He never trod 
his native land again. Having disposed of his cargo and taken 
on board another, he sailed for New York, which he reached in 
July, 1774. The storm of war, which was soon to sweep com- 
merce from the ocean, was already muttering below the horizon, 
when Stephen Girard, " mariner and merchant," as he always 
deliglited to style himself, first saw the land wherein his lot was 
to be cast. For two years longer, however, he continued to 
exercise his twofold vocation. An ancient certificate, preserved 
among his papers, informs the curious ex[)lorer, that, "in the 
year 1774, Steplien Girard sailed as mate of a vessel from New 
York to [New] Orleans, and that he continued to sail out of the 
said port until May, 1776, when he ax'rived in Philadelphia com- 
mander of a sloop," of which the said Stephen Girard was part 
owner. 

Lucky was it for Girard that he got into Philadelphia just 
when he did, with all his possessions with him. He had the nar- 
rowest escape from capture. On his way from New Orleans to 
a Canadian port, he had lost himself in a fog at the entrance 
of Delaware Bay, swarming then with British cruisers, of whose 
presence Captain Girard had heard nothing. His flag of distress 
brought alongside an American captain, who told him where he 
was, and assured him tliat, if he ventured out to sea, he would 
never reach port except as a British prize. '■'■ Mon Dteu!" ex- 
claimed Girard in gi-eat panic, " wliat shall I do ?" " You have 
no clumce but to push right up to Piiilailelphia," replied the cap- 
tain. " How am I to get there ? " said Girard ; " I have no 
pilot, and I don't know the way." A pilot was found, who, how- 
ever, demanded a preliminary payment of five dollars, wliich 
Girard had not on board. In great distress, he implored tlie 
captain to be his security for the sum. He consented, a pilot 
took charge of the sloop, the anchor was heaved, and the vessel 
sped on her way. An hour later, while they were still in sight 



228 STEPHEN GIRARD. 

of the anchorage, a British man-of-war came within the capes. 
But Dr. Franklin, with his oared galleys, his chevaux de frise, 
his forts, and his signal-stations, had made the Delaware a safe 
harbor of refuge ; and Girard arrived safely at Philadelphia on 
one of the early days of May, 1776. Thus it was a mere chance 
of war that gave Girard to the Quaker City. In the whole world 
he could not have found a more congenial abode, for the Quakers 
were the only religious sect with which he ever had the slightest 
sympathy. Quakers he always liked and esteemed, partly be- 
cause they had no priests, partly because they disregarded orna- 
ment and reduced life to its simplest and most obvious utilities, 
partly because some of their opinions were in accord with his 
own. He had grown up during the time when Voltaire was sov- 
ereign lord of the opinions of Continental Europe. Before land- 
ing at Philadelphia, he was already a republican and an unbe- 
liever, and such he remained to the last. The Declaration of 
Independence was impending : he was ready for it. The " Com- 
mon Sense " of Thomas Paine had appeared : he was the man of 
all others to enjoy it. It is, however, questionable if at that time 
he had English enough to understand it in the original, since the 
colloquy just reported with the American captain took place in 
French. He was slow in becoming familiar with the English 
lano-uage, and even to the end of his life seemed to prefer con- 
versing in French. 

He was a mariner no more. The great fleet of Lord Howe 
arrived at New York in July. Every harbor was blockaded, 
and all commerce was suspended. Even the cargoes of tobacco 
despatched by Congress to their Commissioners in France, for 
the purchase of arms and stores, were usually captured before 
they had cleared the Capes. Captain Girard now rented a small 
store in Water Street, near the spot where he lived for nearly 
sixty years, in which he carried on the business of a grocer and 
wine-bottler. Those who knew him at this time report that he 
was a taciturn, repulsive young man, never associating with men 
of his own age and calling, devoted to business, close in his deal- 
ings, of the most rigorous economy, and preserving still the 
rough clothing and general appearance of a sailor. Though but 



AND HIS COLLEGE. ' 229 

twenty-six years of age, he was called " old Girard." He 
seemed conscious of his inability to please, but bore the derision of 
his neighbors with stoical equanimity, and plodded on. 

"War favors the skilful and enterprising business-man. Girard 
had a genius for business. He was not less bold in his operations 
than prudent ; and his judgment as a man of business was well- 
nigh infallible. Destitute of all false pride, he bought whatever 
he thought he could sell to advantage, from a lot of damaged cord- 
age to a pipe of old port ; and he labored incessantly with his 
own hands. He was a thriving man during the first year of his 
residence in Philadelphia ; his chief gain, it is said, being de- 
rived from his favorite business of bottling wine and cider. 

The romance, the mystery, the tragedy of his life now occurred. 
"Walking along "Water Street one day, near the corner of Vine 
Street, the eyes of this reserved and ill-favored man were caught 
by a beautiful servant-girl going to the pump for a pail of water. 
She was an enchanting brunette of sixteen, with luxuriant black 
locks curling and clustering about her neck. As she tripped 
along with bare feet and empty pail, in airy and unconscious 
grace, she captivated the susceptible Frenchman, who saw in her 
the realization of the songs of the forecastle and the reveries of 
the quarter-deck. He sought her acquaintance, and made him- 
self at home in her kitchep. The family whom she served, mis- 
interpreting the designs of the thriving dealer, forbade him the 
house ; when he silenced their scruples by offering the girl his 
hand in marriage. Ill-starred Polly Lumm ! Unhappy Girard ! 
She accepted his offer ; and in July, 1777, the incongruous two, 
being united in matrimony, attempted to become one. 

The war interrupted their brief felicity. Philadelphia, often 
threatened, fell into the hands of Lord Howe in September, 
1777 ; and among the thousands who needlessly fled at his ap- 
proach were " old Girard " and his pretty young wife. He 
bought a house at Mount Holly, near Burlington, in New Jersey, 
for five hundred dollai-s, to which he removed, and there con- 
tinued to bottle claret and sell it to the British officers, until the 
departure of Lord Howe, in June, 1778, permitted his return to 
Philadelphia. The gay young oSicers, it is said, who came to his 



230 STEPHEN GIRAED 

house at Mount Holly to drink his claret, were far from being in- 
sensible to the charms of Mrs. Girard ; and tradition further re- 
ports that on one occasion a dashing colonel snatched a kiss, 
which the sailor resented, and compelled the officer to apologize 
for. 

Of all miserable marriages this was one of the most miserable. 
Here was a young, beautiful, and ignorant girl united to a close, 
ungracious, eager man of business, devoid of sentiment, with a 
violent temper and an unyielding wiU. She was an American, 
he a Frenchman ; and that alone was an immense incompatibili- 
ty. She was seventeen, he twenty-seven. She was a woman ; 
he was a man without imagination, intolerant of foibles. She 
was a beauty, with the natural vanities of a beauty; he not 
merely had no taste for decoration, he disapproved it on princi- 
ple. These points of difference would alone have sufficed to en- 
danger their domestic peace ; but time developed something that 
was fatal to it. Their abode was the scene of contention for 
eight years ; at the expiration of which period Mrs. Girard 
showed such symptoms of insanity that her husband was obliged 
to place her in the Pennsylvania Hospital. In these disti'essing 
circumstances, he appears to have spared no pains for her resto- 
ration. He removed her to a place in the country, but without 
effifct. She returned to his house only to render life insupport- 
able to him. He resumed his old calling as a mariner, and made 
a voyage to the Mediterranean ; but on his return he found his 
wife not less unmanageable than before. In 1790, thirteen 
years after their marriage, and five after the first exhibition of 
insanity, Mrs. Girard was placed permanently in the hospital ; 
where, nine months after, she gave birth to a female child. The 
child soon died ; the mother never recovered her reason. For 
twenty-five years she lived in the hospital, and, dying in 1815, 
was buried in the hospital grounds after the manner of the Qua- 
kers. The coffin was brought to the grave, followed by the hus- 
band and the managers of the institution, who remained standing 
about it in silence for several minutes. It was then lowered to 
its final resting-place, and again the company remained motion- 
less and silent for a while. Girard looked at the coffin once 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 231 

more, then turned to an acquaintance and said, as he walked 
away, " It is very well." A green mound, without headstone or 
monument, still marks the spot where the i-emains of this unhap- 
py woman repose. Girard, both during his lifetime and after his 
death, was a liberal, though not lavish, benefactor of the institu- 
tion which had so long sheltered his wife. 

Fortunes were not made rapidly in the olden time. After the 
Revolution, Girard engaged in commerce with the West Indies, 
in partnership with his brother John ; and he is described in an 
official paper of the time as one who " carried on an extensive 
business as a merchant, and is a considerable owner of real 
estate." But on the dissolution of the partnership in 1790, 
when he had been in business, as mariner and merchant, for six- 
teen years, his estate was valued at only thirty thousand dollars. 
The times were troubled. The French Revolution, the massacre 
at St. Domingo, our disturbed relations with England, and after- 
wards with France, the violence of our party contests, all tended 
to make merchants timid, and to limit their operations. Girard, 
as his papers indicate, and as he used to relate in conversation, 
took more than a merchant's interest in the events of the time. 
From the first, he had formally cast in his lot with the struggling 
Colonists, as we learn from a yellow and faded document left 
among his papers : — 

" I do hereby certify that Stephen Girard, of the city of Philadelphia, 
merchant, hath voluntarily taken the oath of allegiance and fidelity, as 
directed by an act of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, passed 
the 13th day of June, A. D. 1777. Witness my hand and seal, the 
27th day of October, A. D. 1778. 

"Jno. Ord. 

"No. 1678." 

The oath was repeated the year following. When the 
French Revolution had divided the country into two parties, 
the Federalists and the Republicans, Girard was a Republican 
of the radical school. He remembered assistinor to raise a liber- 
ty-pole in the Presidency of John Adams ; and he was one of 
Mr. Jefferson's most uncompromising adherents at a time when 
men of substance were seldom found in the ranks of the Democ- 



232 STEPHEN GIRAED 

racy. As long as he lived, he held the name of Thomas Jeffer- 
son in veneration. 

We have now to contemplate this cold, close, ungainly, ungra- 
cious man in a new character. We are to see that a man may 
seem indifferent to the woes of individuals, but perform sublime 
acts of devotion to a community. We are to observe that there 
are men of sterling but peculiar metal, who only shine when the 
furnace of general affliction is hottest. In 1793, the malignant 
yellow-fever desolated Philadelphia. The consternation of the 
people cannot be conceived by readers of the present day, be- 
cause we cannot conceive of the ignorance which then prevailed 
respecting the laws of contagion, because we have lost in some 
degree the habit of panic, and because no kind of horror can be 
as novel to us as the yellow-fever was to the people of Philadel- 
phia in 1793. One half of the population fled. Those who re- 
mained left their houses only when compelled. Most of the 
churches, the great Coffee-House, the Library, were closed. 
Of four daily newspapers, only one continued to be published. 
Some people constantly smoked tobacco, — even women and 
children did so ; others chewed garlic ; others exploded gun- 
powder ; others burned nitre or sprinkled vinegar ; many as- 
siduously whitewashed every surface within their reach ; some 
carried tarred rope in their hands, or bags of camphor round 
their necks ; others never ventured abroad without a handker- 
chief or a sponge wet with vinegar at their noses. No one ven- 
tured to shake hands. Friends who met in the streets gave each 
other a wide berth, eyed one another askance, exchanged nods, 
and strode on. It was a custom to walk in the middle of the 
street, to get as far from the houses as possible. Many of the 
sick died without help, and the dead were buried without cere- 
mony. The horrid silence of the streets was broken only by the 
tread of litter-bearers and the awful rumble of the dead-wagon. 
Whole families perished, — perished without assistance, their fate 
unknown to their neighbors. Money was powerless to buy at- 
tendance, for the operation of all ordinary motives was sus- 
pended. From the 1st of August to the 9th of November, in 
a population of twenty-five thousand, there were four thousand 
and thirty-one burials, — about one in six. 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 233 

Happily for the honor of human nature, there are always, in 
times like these, great souls whom base panic cannot prostrate. 
A few brave physicians, a few faithful clergymen, a few high- 
minded citizens, a few noble women, remembered and practised 
what is due to humanity overtaken by a calamity like this. On 
the 10th of September, a notice, without signature, ai:)peared in 
the only paper published, stating that all but three of the Visit- 
ors of the Poor were sick, dead, or missing, and calling upon all 
who were willing to help to meet at the City Hall on the 12th. 
From those who attended the meeting, a committee of twenty- 
seven was appointed to superintend the measures for relief, of 
whom Stephen Girard was one. On Sunday, the 15th, the com- 
mittee met ; and the condition of the great hospital at Bush Hill 
was laid before them. It was unclean, ill-regulated, crowded, and 
ill-supplied. Nurses could not be hired at any price, for even to 
approach it was deemed certain death. Then, to the inexpressi- 
ble astonishment and admiration of the committee, two men of 
wealth and importance in the city offered personally to take 
charge of the hospital during the prevalence of the disease. 
Girard was one of these, Peter Helm the other. Girard appears 
to have been the first to offer himself " Stephen Girard," re- 
cords Matthew Carey, a member of the committee, " sympathiz- 
ing with the wretched situation of the sufferers at Bush Hill, 
voluntarily and unexpectedly offered himself as a manager to su- 
perintend that hospital. The surprise and satisfaction excited by 
this extraordinary effort of humanity can be better conceived than 
expressed." 

That very afternoon, Girard and Helm went out to the hospi- 
tal, and entered upon their perilous and repulsive duty. Girard 
chose the post of honor. He took charge of the interior of the 
hospital, while Mr. Helm conducted its out-door affairs. For 
sixty days he continued to perform, by day and night, all the dis- 
tressing and revolting offices incident to the situation. In the 
great scarcity of help, he used frequently to receive the sick and 
dying at the gate, assist in carrying them to their beds, nurse 
them, receive their last messages, watch for their last breath, and 
then, wrapping them in the sheet they had died upon, carry them 



234 STEPHEN GIRARD 

out to tlie burial-ground, aud place them in the trench. He had 
a vivid recollection of the difficulty of finding any kind of fabric 
in which to wrap the dead, when the vast number of interments 
had exhausted the supply of sheets. " I would put them," he 
would say, " in any old rag I could find." If he ever left the 
hospital, it was to visit the infected districts, and assist in remov- 
ing the sick from the houses in which they were dying without 
help. One scene of this kind, witnessed by a merchant, who was 
hurrying past with camphored handkerchief pressed to his mouth, 
affords us a vivid glimpse of this heroic man engaged in his sub- 
lime vocation. A cari'iage, rapidly driven by a black man, broke 
the silence of the deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped 
before a frame house ; and the driver, first having bound a hand- 
kerchief over his mouth, opened the door of the carriage, and 
quickly remounted to the box. A short, thick-set man stepped 
from the coach and entered the house. In a minute or two, the 
observer, who stood at a safe distance watching the proceedings, 
heard a shuffling noise in the entry, and soon saw the stout little 
man supporting with extreme difficulty a tall, gaunt, yellow- 
visaged victim of the pestilence. Girard held round the waist 
the sick man, whose yellow face rested against his own ; his long, 
damp, tangled hair mingled with Girard's ; his feet dragging 
helpless upon the pavement. Thus he drew him to the carriage 
door, the driver averting his face from the spectacle, far from 
offering to assist. Partly dragging, partly lifting, he succeeded, 
after long and severe exertion, in getting him into the vehicle. 
He then entered it himself, closed the door, and the carriage 
drove away towards the hospital. 

A man who can do such things at such a time may commit 
errors and cherish erroneous opinions, but the essence of that 
which makes the difi^erence between a good man and a bad man 
must dwell within him. Twice afterwards Philadelphia was 
visited by yellow-fever, in 1797 and 1798. On both occasions, 
Girard took the lead, by personal exertion or gifts of money, in 
relieving the poor and the sick. He had a singular taste for 
nursing the sick, though a sturdy unbeliever in medicine. Ac- 
cording to him, nature, not doctors, is the restorer, — nature, 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 235 

aided by good nursing. Thus, after the yellow-fever of 1793, he 
wrote to a friend in France : " During all this frightful time, I 
have constantly remained in the city ; and, without neglecting my 
public duties, I have played a part which will make you smile. 
Would you believe it, my friend, that I have visited as many as 
fifteen sick people in a day? and w^hat will surprise you still 
more, I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would drink 
a little. I do not flatter myself that I have cured one single 
person ; but you will think with me, that in my quality of Phila- 
delphia physician I have been very moderate, and that not one of 
my confreres has killed fewer than myself." 

It is not by nursing the sick, however, that men acquire 
colossal fortunes. We revert, therefore, to the business career 
of this extraordinary man. Girard, in the ancient and honorable 
acceptation of the term, was a merchant ; i. e. a man who sent 
his own ships to foi'eign countries, and exchanged their products 
for those of his own. Beginning in the West India trade, with 
one small schooner built with difficulty and managed with cau- 
tion, he expanded his business as his capital increased, until he 
was the owner of a fleet of merchantmen, and brought home to 
Philadelphia the products of every clime. Beginning with single 
voyages, his vessels merely sailing to a foreign port and back 
again, he was accustomed at length to project great mercantile 
cruises, extending over long periods of time, and embracing many 
ports. A ship loaded with cotton and grain would sail, for 
example, to Bordeaux, there discharge, and take in a cargo of 
wine and fruit ; thence to St. Petersburg, where she would ex- 
change her wine and fruit for hemp and iron ; then to Amster- 
dam, where the hemp and iron would be sold for dollars ; to Cal- 
cutta next for a cargo of tea and silks, with which the ship would 
return to Philadelphia. Such were the voyages so often success- 
fully made by the Voltaire, the Rousseau, the Helvetius, and the 
Montesquieu ; ships long the pride of Girard and the boast of 
Philadelpliia, their names being the tribute paid by the merchant 
to the literature of his native land. He seldom failed to make 
very large profits. He rarely, if ever, lost a ship. 

His neighbors, the merchants of Philadelphia, deemed him a 



236 STEPHEN GIRAED 

lucky man. .Many of them thought they could do as well as he, 
if they only had his luck. But the great volumes of his letters 
and papers, preserved in a room of the Girard College, show that 
his success in business was not due, in any degree whatevei', to 
good fortune. Let a money-making generation take note, that 
Girard pi'inciples inevitably produce Girard results. The grand, 
the fundamental seci-et of his success, as of all success, was that 
lie understood his business. He had a persona], familiar knowl- 
edge of the ports with which he traded, the commodities in which 
he dealt, the vehicles in which they were carried, the dangers to 
which they were liable, and the various kinds of men through 
whom he acted. He observed everything, and forgot nothing. 
He had done everything himself which he had occasion to re- 
quire others to do. His directions to his captains and super- 
cargoes, full, minute, exact, peremptory, show the hand of a 
master. Every possible contingency was foreseen and provided 
for ; and he demanded the most literal obedience to the maxim, 
" Obey orders, though you break owners." He would dismiss a 
captain from his service forever, if he saved the whole profits of 
a voyage by departing from his instructions. He did so on one 
occasion. Add to this perfect knowledge of his craft, that he had 
a self-control which never permitted him to anticipate his gains 
or spread too wide his sails ; that his industry knew no pause ; 
that he was a close, hard bargainer, keeping his word to the let- 
ter, but exacting his rights to the letter ; that he had no vices 
and no vanities ; that he had no toleration for those calamities 
which result from vices and vanities ; that his charities, though 
frequent, were bestowed only upon unquestionably legitimate 
objects, and were never profuse ; that he was as wise in invest- 
ing as skilful in gaining money; that he made his very pleasures 
profitable to himself in money gained, to his neighborhood in im- 
proved fruits and vegetables ; that he had no family to maintain 
and indulge; that he held in utter aversion and contempt the 
costly and burdensome ostentation of a great establishment, fine 
equipages, and a retinue of servants ; that he reduced himself to 
a money-making machine, run at the minimum of exjjense ; — 
and we have an explanation of his rapidly acquired wealth. He 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 237 

used to boast, after he was a millionnaire, of wearing the same 
overcoat for fourteen winters ; and one of his clerks, who saw 
him every day for twenty years, declares that he never remem- 
bered having seen him wear a new-looking garment but once. 
Let us note, too, that he was an adept in the art of getting men 
to serve him with devotion. lie paid small salaries, and was 
never known in his Hfe to bestow a gratuity upon one who served 
him ; but he knew how to make his humblest clerk feel that the 
master's eye was upon him always. Violent in his outbreaks of 
anger, his business letters are singularly polite, and show con- 
sideration for the health and happiness of his subordinates. 

Legitimate commerce makes many men rich ; but in Girard's 
day no man gained by it ten millions of dollars. It was the war 
of 1812, which suspended commerce, that made this merchant so 
enormously rich. In 1811, the charter of the old United States 
Bank expired; and the casting-vote of Vice-President George 
Clinton nesatived the bill for rechartering it. When war was 
imminent, Girard had a million dollars in the bank of Baring 
Brothers in London. This large sum, useless then for purposes 
of commerce, — in peril, too, from the disturbed condition of 
English finance, — he invested in United States stock and in 
stock of the United States Bank, both being depreciated in Eng- 
land. Being thus a large holder of the stock of the bank, the 
charter having expired, and its affairs being in liquidation, he 
bought out the entire concern ; and, merely changing the name to 
Girard's Bank, continued it in being as a private institution, iu 
the same building, with the same coin in its vaults, the same 
bank-notes, the same cashier and clerks. The banking-house and 
the house of the cashier, which cost three hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars, he bought for one hundred and twenty thousand. 
The stock, which he bought at four hundred and twenty, proved 
to be worth, on the winding up of the old bank, four hundred and 
thirty -four. Thus, by this operation, he extricated his property 
in England, invested it wisely in America, established a new 
business in place of one that could no longer be carried on, and 
saved the mercantile community from a considerable part of the 
loss and embarrassment which the total annihilation of the bank 
would have occasioned. 



238 STEPHEN GIRAKD 

His raanagernent of the bank perfectly illustrates his singular 
and apparently contradictory character. Hamilton used to say of 
Burr, that he was great in little things, and little in great thino-s. 
Girard in little things frequently seemed little, but in great things 
he was often magnificently great. For example : the old bank 
had been accustomed to present an overcoat to its watchman 
every Christmas ; Girard forbade the practice as extravagant ; — ■ 
the old bank had supplied penknives gratis to its clerks ; Girard 
made them buy their own ; — the old bank had paid salaries 
which were higher than those given in other banks ; Girard cut 
them down to the average rate. To the watchman and the clerks 
this conduct, doubtless, seemed little. Without pausing to argue 
the question with them, let us contemplate the new banker in his 
great actions. He was the very sheet-anchor of the government 
credit during the whole of that disastrous war. If advances were 
required at a critical moment, it was Girard who was promptest 
to make them. When all other banks and houses were contract- 
ing, it was Girard who stayed the panic by a timely and liberal 
expansion. When all other paper was depreciated, Girard's 
notes, and his alone, were as good as gold. In 1814, when the 
credit of the government was at its lowest ebb, when a loan of 
five millions, at seven per cent interest and twenty dollars bonus, 
was up for weeks, and only procured twenty thousand dollars, it 
was " old Girard " who boldly subscribed for the whole amount ; 
which at once gave it market value, and infused life into the 
paralyzed credit of the nation. Again, in 181 G, when the sub- 
scriptions lagged for the new United States Bank, Girard waited 
until the last day for receiving subscriptions, and then quietly 
subscribed for the whole amount not taken, which was three mil- 
lion one hundred thousand dollars. And yet again, in 1829, 
when the enormous expenditures of Pennsylvania upon her ca- 
nals had exhausted her treasury and impaired her credit, it was 
Girard who prevented the total suspension of the public works 
by a loan to the Governor, which the assembling Legislature 
might or might not reimburse. 

Once, during the war, the control of the coin in the bank pro- 
cured him a signal advantage. In the spring of 1813, his fine 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 239 

ship, the Montesquieu, crammed with tea and flibrics from China, 
was captured by a British shallop when she was almost within 
Delaware Bay. News of the disaster reaching Girard, he sent 
orders to his supercargo to treat for a ransom. The British 
admiral gave up the vessel for one hundred and eighty thousand 
dollars in coin ; and, despite this costly ransom, the cargo yielded 
a larger profit than that of any ship of Girard's during the whole 
of his mercantile career. Tea was then selling at war prices. 
Much of it brought, at auction, two dollars and fourteen cents a 
pound, more than four times its cost in China. He appears to 
have cained about half a million of dollars. 

From the close of the war to the end of his life, a period of 
sixteen years, Girard pursued the even tenor of his way, as keen 
and steady in the pursuit of wealth, and as careful in preserving 
it, as though his fortune were still insecure. Why was this ? 
We should answer the question thus : Because his defective edu- 
cation left him no other resource. We frequently hear the " suc- 
cess " of such men as Astor and Girard adduced as evidence of 
the uselessness of early education. On the contrary, it is precise- 
ly such men who prove its necessity ; since, when they have 
conquered fortune, they know not how to avail themselves of its 
advantages. When Franklin had, at the age of forty-two, won a 
moderate competence, he could turn from business to science, and 
from science to the public service, using money as a means to the 
noblest ends. Strong-minded but unlettered men, like Girard, 
who cannot be idle, must needs plod on to the end, adding super- 
fluous millions to their estates. In Girard's case, too, there was 
another cause of this entire devotion to business. His domestic 
sorrows had estranged him from mankind, and driven him into 
himself. INIr. Henry W. Arey, the very able and high-minded 
Secretary of Girard College, in whose custody are Girard's pa- 
pers, is convinced that it was not the love of money which kept 
him at work early and late to the last days of his life. 

" No one," he remarks, " who has had access to his private papers, 
can fail to become impressed with the belief that these early disap- 
pointments furnish the true key to his entire character. Originally 
of warm and generous impulses, the beUef in childhood that he had not 



240 STEPHEN GIRAED 

heen friven bis sliare of the love and kindness wliicli were extended to 
others changed the natural current of his feelings, and, acting on a 
warm and passionate temperament, alienated him from his home, his 
parents, and his friends. And when in after time there were super- 
added the years of bitter anguish resulting from his unfortunate and 
iU-adapted marriage, rendered even more poignant by the necessity of 
concealment, and the consequent injustice of public sentiment, and 
marring all his cherished expectations, it may be readily understood 
why constant occupation became a necessity, and labor a pleasure." 

Girard himself confirms this opinion. lu one of his letters of 
1820, to a friend in New Orleans, he says : — 

" I observe with pleasure that you have a numerous family, that you 
are happy and in the possession of an honest fortune. This is all that 
a wise man has the right to wish for. As to myself, I live like a gal- 
ley-slave, constantly occupied, and often passing the night without sleep- 
ing. I am Avrapped up in a labyrinth of affairs, and worn out with 
care. I do not value fortune. The love of labor is my highest ambi- 
tion. You perceive that your situation is a thousand times preferable 
to mine." 

In his lifetime, as we have remarked, few men loved Girard, 
still fewer understood hira. He was considered mean, hard, 
avaricious. If a rich man goes into a store to buy a yard of 
cloth, no one expects that he will give five dollars for it when the 
price is four. But there is a universal impression that it is 
" handsome " in him to give higher wages than other people to 
those who serve him, to bestow gratuities upon them, and, espe- 
cially, to give away endless sums in charity. The truth is, how- 
ever, that one of the duties which a rich man owes to society is to 
be careful not to disturb the law of supply and demand by giving 
more money for anything than a fair price, and 7iot to encourage 
improvidence and servility by inconsiderate and profuse gifts. 
Girard rescued his poor relations in France from want, and edu- 
cated nieces and nephews in his own house ; but his gifts to them 
were not proportioned to his own wealth, but to their circum- 
stances. His design evidently was to help them as much as 
would do them good, but not so much as to injure them as self- 
sustaining members of society. And surely it was well for every 
clerk in his bank to know that all he had to expect from the rich 



AND mS COLLEGE. 241 

Girard was only what he would have received if he had served 
another bank. The money which in loose hands might have re- 
laxed the arm of industry and the spirit of indejjendence, which 
might have pampered and debased a retinue of menials, and 
drawn around the dispenser a crowd of cringing beggars and ex- 
pectants, was invested in solid houses, which Girard's books show 
yielded him a profit of three per cent, but which furnished to 
many families comfortable abodes at moderate rents. To the 
most passionate entreaties of failing merchants for a loan to heiji 
them over a crisis, he was inflexibly deaf. They thought it 
meanness. But we can safely infer from Girard's letters and 
conversation that he thought it an injury to the community to 
avert from a man of business the consequences of extravagance 
and folly, which, in his view, were the sole causes of failure. If 
there was anything that Girard utterly despised and detested, it 
was that vicious mode of doing business which, together with ex- 
travagant living, causes seven business men in ten to fail every 
ten years. We are enabled to state, however, on the best au- 
thority, that he was substantially just to those whom he employed, 
and considerately kind to his own kindred. At least he meant to 
be kind ; he did for them what he really thought was for their 
good. To little children, and to them only, he was gracious and 
affectionate in manner. He was never so happy as when he had 
a child to caress and play with. 

After the peace of 1815, Girard began to consider what he 
should do with his millions after his death. He was then sixty- 
five, but he expected and meant to live to a good age. " The 
Russians," he would say, when he was mixing his olla podrida of 
a Russian salad, " understand best how to eat and drink ; and I 
am going to see how long, by following their customs, I can live." 
Pie kept an excellent table ; but he became abstemious as he 
grew older, and lived chiefly on his salad and his good claret. En- 
joying perfect health, it was not until about the year 1828, when 
he was seventy-eight years of age, that he entered upon the se- 
rious consideration of a plan for the final disposal of his immense 
estate. Upon one point his mind had been long made up. " No 
man," said he, " shall be a gentleman on my money." He often, 
11 p 



242 STEPHEN GIRAED 

said that, even if be Iiad had a son, he should have been brought 
up to labor, and should not, by a great legacy, be exempted from 
the necessity of labor. " If I should leave him twenty thousand 
dollars," he said, " he would be lazy or turn gambler." Very 
likely. The son of a man like Girard, who was virtuous without 
being able to make virtue engaging, whose mind was strong but 
rigid and ill-furnished, commanding but uninstructive, is likely to 
have a barren mind and rampant desires, the twin causes of de- 
bauchery. His decided inclination was to leave the bulk of his 
property for the endowment of an institution of some kind for the 
benefit of Philadelphia. The only question was, what kind of in- 
stitution it should be. 

William J. Duane* was his legal adviser then, — that honest 
and intrepid William J. Duane who, a few years later, stood 
calmly his ground on the question of the removal of the deposits 
against the infuriate Jackson, the Kitchen Cabinet, and the 
Democratic party. Girard felt all the worth of this able and 
honorable lawyer. With him alone he conversed ujjon the pro- 
jected institution ; and Mr. Duane, without revealing his purpose, 
made inquiries among his travelled friends respecting the endowed 
establishments of foreign countries. For several months before 
sitting down to prepare the will, they never met without convers- 
ing upon this topic, which was also the chief subject of discourse 
between them on Sunday afternoons, when Mr. Duane invariably 
dined at Mr. Girard's country-house. A home for the education 
of orphans was at length decided upon, and then the will was 
drawn. For three weeks the lawyer and his client were closeted, 
toiling at the multifarious details of that curious document. 

The minor bequests were speedily arranged, though they were 
numerous and well considered. He left to the Pennsylvania 
Hospital, thirty thousand dollars ; to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, 
twenty thousand ; to the Orphan Asylum, ten thousand ; to the 
Lancaster public schools, the sanae sum ; the same for providing 
fuel for the poor in Philadelphia ; the same to the Society for the 
Relief of Distressed Sea-Captains and their families; to the 

* The facts which follow I received from the lips and from the papers of this 
revered man, now no more. — J. P. 



AND lUS COLLEGE. 243 

Freemasons of Pennsylvania, for the relief of poor members 
twenty thousand ; six thousand for the establishment of a free 
school in Passyunk, near Philadelphia ; to his surviving brother, 
and to his eleven nieces, he left sums varying from five thousand 
dollars to twenty thousand ; but to one of his nieces, who had a 
very large fomily, he left sixty thousand dollars. To each of the 
captains who had made two voyages in his service, and who should 
bring his ship safely into port, he gave fifteen hundred dollars ; 
and to each of his apprentices, five hundred. To his old servants, 
he left annuities of three hundred and five hundred dollars each. 
A portion of his valuable estates in Louisiana he bequeathed to 
the corporation of New Orleans, for the improvement of that city. 
Half a million he left for certain impi'ovements in the city of 
Philadelphia ; and to Pennsylvania, three hundred thousand dol- 
lars for her canals. The whole of the residue of his property, 
w'orth then about six millions of dollars, he devoted to the con- 
struction and endowment of a College for Orphans. 

Accustomed all his life to give minute directions to those 
whom he selected to execute his designs, he followed the same 
system in that part of his will which related to the College. The 
whole will was written out three times, and some parts of it more 
than three. He strove most earnestly, and so did Mr. Duane, t.> 
make every paragraph so clear that no one could misunderstand 
it. No candid person, sincerely desirous to understand his inten- 
tions, has ever found it difficult to do so. He directed that the 
buildings should be constructed of the most durable materials, 
"avoiding useless ornament, attending chiefiy to the strength, 
convenience, and neatness of the whole." T/iat, at least, is plain. 
He then proceeded to direct precisely what materials should be 
used, and how they should be used ; prescribing the number of 
buildings, their size, the number and size of the apartments in 
each, the thickness of each wall, giving every detail of construc- 
tion, as he would have given it to a builder. He then gave 
briefer directions as to the management of the institution. The 
orphans were to be plainly but wholesomely fed, clothed, and 
lodged ; instructed in the English branches, in geometry, natural 
philosophy, the French and Spanish languages, and whatever else 



244 STEPHEN GIRARD 

miffht be deemed suitable and beneficial to them. "I would have 
them," says the will, " taught facts and things, rather than words 
or signs." At the conclusion of the course, the pupils were to be 
apprenticed to "suitable occupations, as those of agriculture, nav- 
igation, arts, mechanical trades, and manufactures." 

The most remarkable passage of the will is the following. 
The Italics are those of the original document. 

" I enjoin and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of 
any sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise any station or duty what- 
ever in the said College; nor shall any such person ever be admitted for 
any purpose, or as a visitor, ivithin the premises ajypropriated to the pur- 
poses of the said College. In making this restriction, I do not mean to 
cast any reflection upon any sect or person -whatsoever ; but as there is 
such a multitude of sects, and such a diversity of opinion amongst them, 
I desire to keep the tender minds of the orphans, who are to derive 
advantage from this bequest, free from the excitement which clashing 
doctrines and sectarian controversy are so apt to produce ; my desire is, 
that all the instructors and teachers in the College shall take pains to 
instil into the minds of the scholars the purest principles of morality, so 
that, on their entrance into active life, they may,/rom inclination and 
habit, evince benevolence toward their fellow-creatures, and a love of 
truth, sobriety, and industry, adopting at the same time such religious 
tenets as their matured reason may enable them to prefer." 

When Mr. Duane had written this passage at Girard's dicta- 
tion, a conversation occurred between them, which revealed, per- 
haps, one of the old gentleman's reasons for insertmg it. " What 
do you think of that ? " asked Girard. Mr. Duane, being unpre- 
pared to comment upon such an unexpected injunction, replied, 
after a long pause, " I can only say now, Mr. Girard, that I think 
it will make a great sensation." Girard then said, " I can tell 
you something else it will do, — it will please the Quakers." He 
gave another proof of his regard for the Quakers by naming three 
of them as the executors of his will ; the whole number of the 
executors being five. 

In February, 1830, the will was executed, and deposited in 
Mr. Girard's iron safe. None but the two men who had drawn 
the will, and the three men who witnessed the signing of it, 
were aware of its existence ; and none but Girard and Mr. Du- 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 245 

ane had the least knowledge of its contents. There never was 
such a keeper of his own secrets as Girard, and never a more 
faithful keeper of other men's secrets than Mr. Duane. And 
here we have another illustration of the old man's character. 
He had just signed a will of unexampled liberality to. the public; 
and the sum which he gave the able and devoted lawyer for his 
three weeks' labor in drawing it was three hundred dollars ! 

Girard lived nearly two years longer, always devoted to busi- 
ness, and still investing his gains with care. An accident in the 
street gave a shock to his constitution, from which he never fully 
recovered; and in December, 1831, when he was nearly eighty- 
two years of age, an attack of influenza terminated his life. 
True to his principles, he refused to be cupped, or to take drugs 
into his system, though both were prescribed by a physician 
whom he respected. 

Death having dissolved the powerful spell of a presence which 
few men had been able to resist, it was to be seen how far his 
will would be obeyed, now that he was no longer able personally 
to enforce it. The old man lay dead in his house in Water 
Street. While the public out of doors were curious enough to 
learn what he had done with his money, there was a smaller 
number within the house, the kindred of the deceased, in whom 
this curiosity raged like a mania. They invaded the cellars of 
the house, and, bringing up bottles of the old man's choice wine, 
kept up a continual carouse. Surrounding Mr. Duane, who had 
been present at Mr. Girard's death, and remained to direct his 
funeral, they demanded to know if there was a wilL To silence 
their indecent clamor, he told them there was, and that he was 
one of the executors. On hearing this, their desire to learn its 
contents rose to fury. In vain the executors reminded them 
that decency required that the will should not be opened till after 
the funeral. They even threatened legal proceedings if the will 
were not immediately produced ; and at length, to avoid a public 
scandal, the executors consented to have it read. These affec- 
tionate relatives being assembled in a parlor of the house in 
which the body of their benefactor lay, the will was taken from 
the iron safe by one of the executors.* 

* Mr. Duane. 



246 STEPHEN GIRAED 

When he had opened it, and was about to begin to read, he 
chanced to look over the top of the document at the company 
seated before him. No artist that ever held a brush could depict 
the passion of curiosity, the frenzy of expectation, expressed in 
that group of pallid faces. Every individual among them ex- 
pected to leave the apartment the conscious possessor of millions, 
for no one had dreamed of the probability of his leaving the bulk 
of his estate to the public. If they had ever heard of his saying 
that no one should be gentleman upon his money, they had for- 
gotten or disbelieved it. The opening paragraphs of the will all 
tended to confirm their hopes, since the bequests to existing insti- 
tutions were of small amount. But the reader soon reached the 
part of the will which assigned to ladies and gentlemen present 
such trifling sums as five thousand dollars, ten thousand, twenty 
thousand ; and lie arrived erelong at the sections which disposed 
of millions for the benefit of great cities and poor children. Some 
of them made not the slightest attempt to conceal their disap- 
pointment and disgust. Men were there who had married with 
a view to share the wealth of Girard, and had been waiting years 
for his death. Women were there who had looked to that event 
as the beginning of their enjoyment of life. The imagination of 
the reader must supply the details of a scene which we might 
think dishonored human nature, if we could believe that human 
nature was meant to be subjected to such a strain. It had been 
better, perhaps, if the rich man, in his own lifetime, had made 
his kindred partakers of his superabundance, especially as he had 
nothing else that he could share with them. They attempted, on 
grounds that seem utterly frivolous, to break the will, and em- 
ployed the most eminent counsel to conduct their cause, but with- 
out effect. They did, however, succeed in getting the property 
acquired after the execution of the will; which Girard, disregard- 
ing the opinion of Mr. Duane, attempted by a postscript to include 
in the will. " It will not stand," said the lawyer. " Yes it will," 
said Girard. Mr. Duane, knowing his man, was silent ; and the 
courts have since decided that his opinion was correct. 

Thirty-three years have passed since the city of Philadelphia 
entered upon the possession of the enormous and growing estate 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 247 

with which Mr. Gh'ard intrusted it. It is a question of general 
interest how the trust has been administered. No citizen of Phil- 
adelphia needs to be informed, that, in some particulars, the gov- 
ernment of their city has shown little more regard to the manifest 
will of Gii'ard than his nephews and nieces did. If he were to 
revisit the banks of the Schuylkill, would he recognize, in the 
splendid Grecian temple that stands in the centime of the College 
grounds, the home for poor orphans, devoid of needless ornament, 
which he directed should be built there ? It is singular that the 
very ornaments which Girard particularly disliked are those 
which have been employed in the erection of this temple ; name- 
ly, pillars. He had such an aversion to pillars, that he had at 
one time meditated taking down those which supported the por- 
tico of his bank. Behold his College surrounded with thirty-four 
Corinthian columns, six feet in diameter and fifty-nine in height, 
of marble, with capitals elaborately carved, each pillar having 
cost thirteen thousand dollars, and the whole colonnade four 
hundred and forty thousand ! And this is the abode of poor 
little boys, who will leave the gorgeous scene to labor in shops, 
and to live in such apartments as are usually assigned to appren- 
tices ! 

Now there is probably no community on earth where the num- 
ber of honorable men bears a larger proportion to the whole pop- 
ulation than in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a community of 
honest dealers and faithful workmen. It is a matter of the high- 
est interest to know how it could happen that, in such a city, a 
bequest for such a purpose should be so monstrously misappro- 
priated. 

The magnitude of the bequest was itself one cause of its mis- 
appropriation, and the habits of the country were another. When 
we set about founding an institution, our first proceeding is to 
erect a vast and imposing edifice. When we pronounce the word 
College, a vision of architecture is called up. It was natural, 
therefore, that the people of Philadelphia, bewildered by the un- 
precedented amount of the donation, should look to see the mo- 
notony of their city relieved by something novel and stupendous 
in the way of a building ; and there appears to have been no one 



248 STEPHEN GIEARD 

to remind them that the value of a school depends wholly upon 
the teachers who conduct it, provided those teachers are free to 
execute their plans. The immediate cause, however, of the re- 
markable departure from the will in the construction of the prin- 
cipal edifice was this : the custody of the Girard estate fell into 
the hands of the politicians of the city, \yho regarded the patron- 
age appertaining thereunto as part of the " spoils " of victory at 
the polls. As we live at a time when honest lovers of their 
country frequently meditate on the means of rescuing important 
public interests from the control of politicians, we shall not deem 
a little of our space ill bestowed in recounting the history of the 
preposterous edifice which Girard's money paid for, and which 
Girard's will forbade. 

On this subject we can avail ourselves of the testimony of the 
late Mr. Duane. During his own lifetime he would not per- 
mit the following narrative to be published, though he allowed it 
to be used as a source of information. "We can now give it in his 
own words : — 

" In relation to the Girard College, (lie lohole community of Philadel- 
pMa, and all political parties in it, are culpable. At the time of Mr. 
Girard's death there was a mixture of Democrats and Federalists in our 
Councils : the former preponderating in number. It is said that of all 
steps the first is the most important, and that the first proceeding has 
either a good or a bad influence in all that follow. Now, what was 
the first step of the Democratic Councils, after Mr. Girard's death, in re- 
lation to the College ? Were they satisfied with the plan of it as de- 
scribed in his will ? Did they scout the project of building a palace 
for poor orphans ? Were there no views to offices and profits under 
the trust ? As I was in the Select Council at the time myself, I can 
partly answer these questions. Instead of considering the plan of a 
College given in the will a good one, the Democratic Councils offered 
rewards to architects for other plans. And as to oflices, some members 
of Councils looked forward to them, to say nothing of aspirants out of 
doors. 

" I have ever been a Democrat in principle myself, but not so much 
of a modern one in practice as to pretend that the Democratic party 
are fi-ee from blame as to the College. If they had been content with 
Mr. Girard's plain plan, would they have called in architects for others ? 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 249 

If they had been opposed to pillars and ornaments, why did they invite 
scientific men to prepare pictures and plans almost inevitably orna- 
mental ? If they had been so careful of the trust funds, why did they 
stimulate the community, by presenting to them architectural drawings, 
to prefer some one of them to the simple plan of Girard himself ? Be- 
sides, after they had been removed from power, and saw preparations 
made for a temple surrounded with costly columns, why did they not 
invoke the Democratic Legislature to arrest that proceeding ? li' they 
at any time whatever did make such an appeal, I have no recollection 
of it. For party effect, much may have been said and done on an 
election day, but I am not aware that otherwise any resistance was 
made. No doubt there were many good men in the Democratic party 
in 1831-2, and there always have been many good men in it ; but I 
doubt whether those who made the most noise about the College on 
election days were either the best Democrats or the best men. The 
leaders, as they are called, were just as factious as the leaders of their 
opponents. The struggle of both for the Girard Fund was mainly with 
a view to party influence. How much at variance with Mr. Girard's 
wishes this course was, may readily be shown. 

" Immediately after his death in 1831, his will was published in the 
newspapers, in almanacs, and in other shapes likely to make its contents 
universally known. In it he said : ' In relation to the organization of 
the College and its appurtenances, I leave necessarily many details to 
the mayor, aldermen, and citizens of Philadelphia, and their successors ; 
and I do so with the more confidence, as, from the nature of my be- 
quests and the benefit to result from them, I trust that my fellow-citi- 
zens will observe and evince especial care and anxiety In selecting 
members for their City Councils and other agents.' 

" What appeal could have been more emphatic than this ? How 
could the testator have more delicately, but clearly, indicated his anx- 
iety that his estate should be regarded as a sacred provision for poor 
orphans, and not ' spoils ' for trading politicians ? 

"In this city, however, as almost everywhere else, to the public dis- 
credit and injury, our social affairs had been long mingled with the 
party questions of the Republic. At each rise or fall of one or the 
other party, the ' spoils ' were greedily sought for. Even scavengers, 
unless of the victorious party, were deemed unworthy to sweep our 
streets. Mr. Girard's estate, therefore, very soon became an object of 
desire with each party, in order to increase Its strength and favor Its 
adherents. Instead of selecting for the Councils the best men of the 
whole community, as Mr. Girard evidently desired, the citizens of Phil- 
11* 



250 STEPHEN GIRAED 

adelpliia persisted in preserving factious distinctions, and in October, 
1832, the Federal candidates prevailed. 

" The triumphant party soon manifested a sense of their newly ac- 
quired power. Without making any trial whatever of the efficiency 
of the rules prepared by their predecessors for the management of the 
Girard trusts, they at once abolished them ; and there were various 
other analogous evidences of intolerance. 

" Without asserting that party passions actuated them, certain it is, 
that those who were now in power placed none of IVlr. Girard's Inti- 
mate friends In any position where they could aid in carrying out his 
views. No serious application was ever made, to my knowledge, to 
one of them for explanation on any point deemed doubtful. On the 
contrary, objections made by myself and others to the erection of a 
gorgeous temple, instead of a plain building for orphans, were utterly 
disregarded. 

" A majority of the citizens of Philadelphia as a political class, and 
not a majority as a social community, as trustees of a fund for orphans, 
having thus got entire control of the Girard estate, they turned their 
attention to the plans of a College collected by their Democratic pre- 
decessors. Neither of the parties appears to have originally considered 
whether the plan described In the will ought not to be followed, if that 
could be done practically. The main desire of both so far seems to 
have been to build In the vicinity of this city a more magnificent 
edifice than any other in the Union. 

" At this time, Mr. Nicholas Biddle was in the zenith of his power. 
Hundreds of persons, who at the present day find fault with him, were 
then his worshippers. He could command any post which he was will- 
ing to fill. I do not pretend that he sought any post, but it suited his 
inclinations to be at the head of those who were intrusted by Coun- 
cils with the construction of the College. Over his colleagues In this, 
as in another memorable Instance, he seems to have had an absolute 
control. The architect, also, whose plan had been preferred, appears 
to have considered himself bound to adapt it to Mr. Biddle's concep- 
tions of true excellence. And you now behold the result, — a splendid 
temple in an unfinished state, instead of the unostentatious edifice con- 
templated by Mr. Girard. 

" Is all this surprising ? Why should Democrats think it so ? It was 
by them that plans and pictures of architects were called for. Why 
should their ojjponents be astonished? It was by them that a carte 
blanche seems to have been given to Mr. Biddle In relation to the plans 
and the College. Is Mr. Biddle culpable ? Is there no excuse for one 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 251 

so strongly tempted as he was, not merely to produce a splendid edi- 
fice, but to connect his name, in some measure, with that of its found- 
er ? While I am not an apologist for Mr. Biddle, I am not willing to 
cast blame upon him alone for the waste of time and money that we 
have witnessed. As a classical scholar, a man of taste, and a traveller 
abroad, it was not unnatural that he should desire to see near his na- 
tive city the most magnificent edifice in North America. Having all 
the pride and sense of power which adulation is calculated to produce, 
the plain house described in his will may have appeared to him a prof- 
anation of all that is beautiful in architecture, and an outrage at once 
against all the Grecian orders. In short, the will of Mr. Girard to the 
contrary, Mr. Biddle, like another distinguished person, may have 
said, ' I take the responsibility ! ' 

" It is true that this responsibility was a serious one, but less so to 
Mr. Biddle than to the City Councils. They were the trustees, and 
ou2;ht to have considered Mr. Girard's will as law to them. Thev 
should have counted the cost of departing from it. They ought to 
have reflected that by departing from it many orphans would be ex- 
cluded from the benefits of education. They should have considered 
whether a Grecian temple would be such a place as poor orphans 
destined to labor ought to be reared in. The Councils of 1832-3, 
therefore, have no apology to offer. But Mr. Biddle may well say to 
all our parties : ' You are all more in faidt than I am. You Demo- 
crats gave rewards for plans. You Federalists submitted those plans 
to me, and I pointed out the one I thought the best, making improve- 
ments ujion it. A very few persons, Mr. Ronaldson, Mr. Duane, and 
one or two others alone objected ; while the majority of my fellow- 
citizens, the Councils, and the Legislature, all looked on at what I was 
doing, and were silent.' " 

While erecting an edifice the most opposite to Girard's inten- 
tions that could be contrived by man, the architect was permitted 
to follow the directions of the will in minor particulars, that ren- 
dered the building as inconvenient as it was magnificent. The 
vaulted ceilings of those spacious rooms reverberated to such a 
degree, that not a class could say its lesson in them till they were 
hung with cotton cloth. The massive walls exuded dampness 
continually. The rooms of the uppermost story, lighted only 
from above, were so hot in the summer as to be useless ; and the 
lower rooms were so cold in winter as to endanger the health of 



252 STEPHEN GIEARD 

the inmates. It has required ingenuity and expense to render 
the main building habitable ; but even now the visitor cannot but 
smile as he compares the splendor of the architecture with the 
homely benevolence of its purpose. The Parthenon was a suit- 
able dwelling-place for a marble goddess, but the mothers of 
Athens would have shuddered at the thought of consigning their 
little boys to dwell in its chilling grandeurs. 

We can scarcely overstate the bad effect of this first mistake. 
It has constantly tended to obscure Mr. Girard's real purpose, 
which was to afford a plain, comfortable home, and a plain, sub- 
stantial education to poor orphans, destined to gain their livelihood 
by labor. Always there have been two parties in the Board of 
Directors : one favoring a scheme which would make the Colleo-e 
a college ; the other striving to keep it down to the modest level 
of the founder's intentions. That huge and dazzlinjr edifice 
seems always to have been exerting a powerful influence against 
the stricter constructionists of the will. It is only within the last 
two years that this silent but ponderous argument has been par- 
tially overcome by the resolute good-sense of a majority of the 
Directors. Not the least evil consequent upon the erection of 
this building was, that the delay in opening the College caused 
the resignation of its first President, Alexander D. Bache, a gen- 
tleman who had it in him to organize the institution aright, and 
give it a fair start. It is a curious fact, that the extensive report 
by this gentleman of his year's observation of the orphan schools 
of Europe has not been of any practical use in the organization 
of Girard College. Either the Directors have not consulted it, 
or they have found nothing in it available for their purpose. 

The first class of one hundred pupils was admitted to the Col- 
lege on the first day of the year 1848. The number of inmates 
is now six hundred. The estate will probably enable the Direc- 
tors to admit at length as many as fifteen hundred. It will be 
seen, therefore, that Girard College, merely from the number of 
its pupils, is an institution of great importance. 

Sixteen years have gone by since the College was opened, 
but it cannot yet be said that the policy of the Directors is fixed. 
These Directors, appointed by the City Councils, are eighteen in 



AND fflS COLLEGE. 253 

number, of whom six go out of office every year, while the Coun- 
cils themselves are annually elected. Hence the difficulty of set- 
tling upon a plan, and the greater difficulty of adhering to one. 
Sometimes a majority has favored the introduction of Latin or 
Greek ; again, the manual-labor system has had advocates ; some 
have desired a liberal scale of living for the pupils ; others have 
thought it best to give them Spartan fare. Four times the Pres- 
ident has been changed, and there have been two periods of con- 
siderable length when there was no President. There have been 
dissensions without and trouble within. As many as forty-four 
boys have run away in a single year. Meanwhile, the Annual 
Reports of the Directors have usually been so vague and so ret- 
icent, that the public was left utterly in the dark as to the condi- 
tion of the institution. Letters from masters to whom pupils 
have been apprenticed were published in the Reports, but only 
the letters which had nothing but good to say of the apprentices. 
Large numbers of the boys, it is true, have done and are doing 
credit to the College ; but the public have no means of judging 
whether, upon the whole, the training of the College has been 
successful. 

Nevertheless, we believe we may say with truth that invalu- 
able experience has been gained, and genuine progress has been 
made. To maintain and educate six hundred boys, even if those 
boys had enlightened parents to aid in the work, is a task which 
would exhaust the wisdom and the tact of the greatest educator 
that ever lived. But these boys are all fatherless, and many of 
them motherless ; the mothers of many are ignorant and unwise, 
of some are even vicious and dissolute. A large number of the 
boys are of very inferior endowments, have acquired bad habits, 
have inherited evil tendencies. It would be hard to overstate 
the difficulty of the work which the will of Girard has devolved 
upon the Directors and teachers of Girard College. Mistakes 
have been made, but perhaps they have not been more serious or 
more numerous than we ought to expect in the forming of an in- 
stitution absolutely unique, and composed of material the most 
unmanageable. 

There are indications, too, that the period of experiment draws 



254 STEPHEN GIRAKD 

to an end, and that the final plan of the College, on the basis of 
common-sense, is about to be settled. Mr. Richard Vaux, the 
present head of the Board of Directors, writes Reports in a style 
most eccentric, and not always intelligible to remote readers ; but 
it is evident that his heart is in the work, and that he belonsfs to 
the party who desire the College to be the useful, unambitious 
institution that Girard wished it to be. His Reports are not 
written with rose-water. They say something. They confess 
some failures, as well as vaunt some successes. We would ear- 
nestly advise the Directors never to shrink from taking the public 
into their confidence. The public is wiser and better than any 
man or any board. A plain statement every year of the real 
condition of the College, the real difficulties in the way of its 
organization, would have been far better than the carefully 
uttered nothings of which the Annual Reports have generally 
consisted. It was to Philadelphia that Girard left his estate. 
The honor of Philadelphia is involved in its faithful adminis- 
tration. Philadelphia has a right to know how it is adminis- 
tered. 

The President of the College is Major Richard Somers Smith, 
a graduate of "West Point, where he was afterwards a Professor. 
He has served with distinction in the Army of the Potomac, in 
which he commanded a brigade. To learn how to be an effi- 
cient President of Girard College is itself a labor of years ; 
and Major Smith is only in the second year of his incumbency. 
The highest hopes are indulged, however, that under his energetic 
rule, the College will become all that the public ought to expect. 
He seems to have perceived at once the weak point of the insti- 
tution. 

" I find in the College," he says in one of his monthly reports, " a 
certain degree of impatience of study, an inertness, a dragging along, 
an infection of ' young-Americanism,' a disposition to flounder along 
through duties half done, hurrying to reach — what is never attained 
— an ' easy success ' ; and I observe that this state of things is confined 
to the higher departments of study. In the elementary departments 
there is life ; but as soon as the boy has acquired the rudiments of his 
English or common-school education, he begins to chafe, and to feel 



AND mS COLLEGE. 255 

that it is time for him to go out, and to make haste to ' finish (!) his 
studies,' — -which of course he does without much heart." 

And again : — 

" The ' poor white male orphan,' dwelling for eight or ten years in 
comfort almost amounting to luxury, waited upon by servants and ma- 
chinery in nearly all his domestic requirements, unused to labor, or la- 
boring only occasionally, with some reward in view in the form of ex- 
tra privileges, finds it hard to descend from his fancied elevation to the 
lot of a simple apprentice ; and his disappointment is not soothed by 
the discovery that with all his learning he has not learned wherewithal 
to give ready satisfaction to his master." 

It has been difficult, also, to induce the large manufacturers to 
take apprentices ; they are now accustomed to place boys at once 
upon the footing of men, paying them such wages as they are 
worth. Men who employ forty boys will not generally undertake 
the responsibilities involved in receiving them as bound appren- 
tices for a tei'm of years. 

To remedy all these evils, Major Smith proposes to add to the 
College a Manual Labor Department, in which the elder boys 
shall acquire the rudiments of the arts and trades to which they 
are destined. This will alleviate the tedium of the College rou- 
tine, assist the physical development of the boys, and send them 
forth prepared to render more desirable help to their employers. 
The present Board of Directors favor the scheme. 

In one particular the College has fulfilled the wishes of its 
founder. He said in his will, " I desire that by every proper 
means, a pure attachment to our republican institutions, and to 
the sacred rights of conscience, as guaranteed by our happy Con- 
stitution, shall be formed and fostered in the minds of the schol- 
ars." Three fourths of the whole number of young men, out of 
their time, who were apprenticed from Girard College, have 
joined the Union army. We must confess, also, that a consid- 
erable number of its apprentices, not out of their time, have run 
away for the same purpose. With regard to the exclusion of 
ecclesiastics, it is agreed on all hands that no evil has resulted 
from that singular injunction of the will. On the contrary, it has 
served to call particular attention to the religious instruction of 



256 STEPHEN GIRARD 

the pupils. The only effect of the clause is, that the morning 
prayers and the Sunday services are conducted by gentlemen 
who have not undergone the ceremony of ordination. 

The income of the Girard estate is now about two hundred 
thousand dollars a year, and it is increasing. Supposing that 
only one half of this revenue is appropriated to the College, it is 
still, we believe, the largest endowment in the country for an 
educational purpose. The means of the College are therefore 
ample. To make those means effective in the highest degree, 
some mode must be devised by which the politics of the city shall 
cease to influence the choice of Directors. In other words, 
" Girard College must be taken out of politics." The Board of 
Directors should, perhaps, be a more permanent body than it 
now is. At the earliest possible moment a scheme of instruction 
should be agreed upon, which should remain unchanged, in its 
leading features, long enough for it to be judged by its results. 
The President must be clothed with ample powers, and held re- 
sponsible, not for methods, but results. He must be allowed, at 
least, to nominate all his assistants, and to recommend the re- 
moval of any for reasons given ; and both his nominations and 
his recommendations of removal, so long as the Directors desire 
to retain his services, should be ratified by them. He must be 
made to feel strong in his place ; otherwise, he will be tempted 
to waste his strength upon the management of committees, and 
general whitewashing. Human nature is so constituted, that a 
gentleman with a large family will not willingly give up an in- 
come of three thousand dollars a year, with lodging in a marble 
palace. If he is a strong man and an honorable, he will do it, 
rather than fill a post the duties of which an ignorant or officious 
committee prevent his discharging. If he is a weak or dishonest 
man, he will cringe to that committee, and expend all his inge- 
nuity in making the College show well on public days. It might 
even be well, in order to strengthen the President, to give him 
the right of appeal to the Mayor and Councils, in case of an 
irreconcilable difference of opinion between him and the Directors, 
Everything depends upon the President. Given the right Pres- 
ident, with power enough and time enough, and the success of 



AND HIS COLLEGE. 257 

the College is assured. Given a bad President, or a good one ■ 
hampered by committees, or too dependent upon a board, and 
the College will be the reproach of Philadelphia. 

It is a question with political economists, whether, upon the 
whole, such endowments as this are a good or an evil to a com- 
munity. There is now a considerable party in England, among 
whom are several clergymen of the Established Church, who 
think it would be better for England if every endowment were 
swept away, and thus to each succeeding generation were re- 
stored the privilege of supporting all its poor, caring for all its 
sick, and educating all its young. Dr. Chalmers appears to have 
been inclined to an opinion like this. It will be long, however, 
before this question becomes vital in America. Girard College 
must continue for generations to weigh heavily on Philadelphia, 
or to lighten its burdens. The conduct of those who have charge 
of it in its infancy will go far to determine whether it shall be an 
argument for or against the utility of endowments. Meanwhile, 
we advise gentlemen who have millions to leave behind them not 
to impose difficult conditions upon the future, which the future 
may be unable or unwilling to fulfil ; but either to bestow their 
wealth for some object that can be immediately and easily accom- 
plished, or else imitate the conduct of that respectable and public- 
spirited man Avho left five pounds towards the discharge of his 
country's debt. 



JAMES GORDON BEJNNETT 



AND 



THE NEW YORK HERALD. 



JAMES GORDON BENNETT AND THE 
NEW YORK HERALD. 



AFEAV years ago it seemed probable that the people of the 
United States would be supplied with news chiefly through 
the agency of newspapers published in the city of New York- 
We were threatened with a paper despotism similar to that former- 
ly exercised in Great Britain by the London Times ; since, when 
one city furnishes a country with newspapers, one newspaper is 
sure, at length, to gain such a predominance over others that its pro- 
prietor, if he is equal to his position, wields a power greater than 
ought to be intrusted to an individual. There have been periods 
when the director of the London Times appeared to be as truly 
the monarch of Great Britain as Henry VIII. once was, or as 
"William Pitt during the Seven Years' War. It was, we believe, 
the opinion of the late Mr. Cobden, which Mr. Kinglake con- 
firms, that the editor of the London Times could have prevented 
the Crimean War. Certainly he conducted it. Demosthenes 
did not more truly direct the resources of Athens against Philip, 
than did this invisible and anonymous being those of the British 
Empire against Russia. The first John Walter, who was to jour- 
nalism what James Watt was to the steam-engine, had given this 
man daily access to the ear of England ; and to that ear he ad- 
dressed, not the effusions of his own mind, but the whole purchas- 
able eloquence of his country. He had relays of Demosthenes. 
The man controlling such a press, and fit to control it, can bring 
the available and practised intellect of his country to bear upon 
the passions of his countrymen ; for it is a fact, that nearly the 
whole literary talent of a nation is at the command' of any honor- 
able man who has money enough, with tact enough. The editor 



262 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

■who exjoends fifty guineas a day in the purchase of three short 
essays can have them written by the men who can do them best. 
What a power is this, to say three things every morning to a 
whole nation, — to say them with all the force which genius, 
knowledge, and practice united can give, — and to say them with- 
out audible contradiction ! Fortunate for England is it that this 
power is no longer concentrated in a single man, and that the 
mighty influence once wielded by an individual will henceforth be 
exerted by a profession. 

We in America have escaped all danger of ever falling under 
the dominion of a paper despot. There will never be a Times in 
America. Twenty years ago the New York news and the New 
York newspaper reached distant cities at the same moment ; but 
since the introduction of the telegraph, the news outstrips the 
newspaper, and is given to the public by the local press. It is 
this fact which forever limits the circulation and national impor- 
tance of the New York press. The New York papers reach a 
village in Vermont late in the afternoon, — six, eight, ten hours 
after a carrier has distributed the Springfield Republican ; and 
nine people in ten will be content with the brief telegrams of the 
local centre. At Chicago, the New York paper is forty hours 
behind the news ; at San Francisco, thirty days ; in Oregon, forty. 
Before California had been reached by the telegraph, the New 
York newspapers, on the arrival of a steamer, were sought with 
an avidity of which the most ludicrous accounts have been given. 
If the news was important and the supply of papers inadequate, 
nothing was more common than for a lucky newsboy to dispose 
of his last sheets at five times their usual price. All this has 
changed. A spirited local press has anticipated the substance of 
the news, and most people wait tranquilly for the same local press 
to spr'ead before them the particulars when the tardy mail 
arrives. Even the weekly and semi-weekly editions issued by 
the New York daily press have probably reached their maximum 
of importance ; since the local daily press also publishes weekly 
and semi-weekly papers, many of which are of high excellence 
and are always improving, and have the additional attraction of 
full local intelligence. If some bold Yankee should invent a 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 258 

method by which a bundle of newspapers could be shot from 
New York to Chicago in half an hour, it would certainly enhance 
the importance of the New York papers, and diminish that of the 
rapidly expanding and able press of Chicago. Such an inven- 
tion is possible ; nay, we think it a probability. But even in that 
case, the local news, and, above all, the local advertising, would 
still remain as the basis of a great, lucrative, honorable, and very 
attractive business. 

We believe, however, that if the local press were annihilated, 
and this whole nation lived dependent upon the press of a single 
city, still we should be safe from a paper despotism ; because the 
power of the editorial lessens as the intelligence of the people in- 
creases. The prestige of the editorial is gone. Just as there is 
a party in England who propose the omission of the sermon from 
the church service as something no longer needed by the people, 
so there are joui-nalists who think the time is at hand for the aboli- 
tion of editorials, and the concentration of the whole force of 
journalism upon presenting to the public the history and picture 
of the day. The time for this has not come, and may never 
come ; but our journalists already know that editorials neither 
make nor mar a daily paper, that they do not much influence the 
public mind, nor change many votes, and that the power and suc- 
cess of a newspaper depend finally upon its success in getting and 
its skill in exhibiting the news. The word newspaper is the 
exact and complete description of the thing which the true jour- 
nalist aims to produce. The news is his work ; editorials are his 
play. The news is the point of rivalry ; it is that for which 
nineteen twentieths of the people buy newspapers ; it is that 
which constitutes the power and value of the daily press ; it is 
that which determines the rank of every nev.'spaper in every free 
country. 

No editor, therefore, will ever reign over the United States, 
and the newspapers of no one city will attain universal currency. 
Hence the importance of journalism in the United States. By 
the time a town has ten thousand inhabitants, it usually has a 
daily paper, and in most large cities there is a daily paper for 
every twenty thousand people. In many of the "Western cities 



264 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

there are daily newspapers conducted with great energy, and on 
a scale of expenditure which enables them to approximate real 
excellence. Many of our readers will live to see the day when 
there will be in Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and 
San Francisco daily newspapers more complete, better executed, 
and produced at greater expense than any newspaper now existing 
in the United States. This is a great deal to say, in view of the 
fact, that, during the late war, one of the New York papers ex 
pended in war correspondence alone two thousand dollars a week. 
Nevertheless, we believe it. There will never be tivo newspapers 
in any one city that can sustain such an expenditure ; but in fif- 
teen years from to-day there will be one, we think, in each of our 
great cities, and besides that one there will be four or five strug- 
gling to supplant it, as well as one or two having humbler aims 
and content with a lowlier position. 

It is plain that journalism will henceforth and forever be an 
important and crowded profession in the United States. The 
daily newspaper is one of those things which are rooted in the ne- 
cessities of modern civilization. The steam-engine is not more 
essential to us. The newspaper is that which connects each in- 
dividual with the general life of mankind, and makes him part and 
parcel of the whole ; so that we can almost say, that those who 
neither read newspapers nor converse with people who do read 
them are not members of the human family ; — though, like the 
negroes of Guinea, they may become such in time. They are 
beyond the pale ; they have no hold of the electric chain, and 
therefore do not receive the shock. 

There are two mornings of the year on which newspapers have 
not hitherto been published in the city of New York, — the 5th 
of July, and the 2d of January. A shadow appears to rest on 
the world during those days, as when there is an eclipse of the 
sun. We are separated from our brethren, cut off, lost, alone j 
vague apprehensions of evil creep over the mind. We feel, in 
some degree, as husbands feel who, far from wife and children, 
say to themselves, shuddering, " What things way have happened, 
and I not know it ! " Nothing quite dispels the gloom until the 
Evening Post — how eagerly seized — assures us that nothing 



/ 



/ 



i 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 265 

very particular has happened since our last. It is amusing to 
notice how universal is the habit of reading a morning paper. 
Hundreds of vehicles and vessels convey the business men of New 
York to that extremity of Manhattan Island which may be re- 
garded as the counting-house of the Western Continent. It is 
not uncommon for every individual in a cabin two hundred feet 
long to be sitting absorbed in his paper, like boys conning their 
lessons on their way to school. Still more striking is it tc ob- 
serve the torrent of workingmen pouring down town, many of 
them reading as they go, and most of them provided with a news- 
paper for dinner-time, not less as a matter of course than the tin 
kettle which contains the material portion of the repast. Notice, 
too, the long line of hackney-coaches on a stand, nearly every 
driver sitting on his box reading his paper. Many of our Boston 
friends have landed in New York at five o'clock in the morning, 
and ridden up town in the street cars, filled, at that hour, with 
women and boys, folding newspapers and throwing off bundles 
of them from time to time, which are caught by other boys and 
women in waiting. Carriers are flitting in every direction, and 
the town is alive with the great business of gettino; two hundred 
thousand papers distributed before breakfast. 

All this is new, but it is also permanent. Having once had 
daily papers, we can never again do without them ; so perfectly 
does this great invention accord with the genius of modern life. 
The art of journalism is doubtless destined to continuous improve- 
ment for a long time to come ; the newspapers of the future will 
be more convenient, and better in every way, than those of the 
present day ; but the art remains forever an indispensable auxili- 
ary to civilization. And this is so, not by virtue of editorial 
essays, but because journalism brings the events of the time to 
bear upon the instruction of the time. An editorial essayist is a 
man addressing men ; but the skilled and faithful journalist, re- 
cording with exactness and power the thing that has come to 
pass, is Providence addressing men. The thing that has actually 
happened, — to know that is the beginning of wisdom. All else 
is theory and conjecture, which may be right and may be wrong. 

While it is true that the daily press of the city of New York 

12 



266 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

is limited by the telegraph, it has nevertheless a very great, an 
unapproached, national importance. We do not consider it cer- 
tain that New York is always to remain the chief city of the 
United States ; but it holds that rank now, and must for many 
years. Besides being the source of a great part of our news, it 
was the first city that afforded scope for papers conducted at the 
incredible expense which modern appliances necessitate. Conse- 
quently its daily papers reach the controlling minds of the coun- 
try. They are found in all reading-rooms, exchanges, bank par- 
lors, insurance-offices, counting-rooms, hotels, and wherever else 
the ruling men of the country congregate. But, above all, they 
are, and must be, in all newspaper offices, subject to the scissors. 
This is the chief source of their importance. Not merely that in 
this way their contents are communicated to the whole people. 
The grand reason why the New York papers have national im- 
portance is, that it is chiefly tli rough them that the art of journal- 
ism in the United States is to be perfected. They set daily copies 
for all editors to follow. The expenditure necessary for the car- 
rying on of a complete daily newspaper is so immense, that the 
art can only be improved in the largest cities. New York is first 
in the field ; it has the start of a quarter of a century or more ; 
and it therefore devolves upon the journalists of that city to teach 
the journalists of the United States their vocation. It is this fact 
which invests the press of New York with such' importance, and 
makes it so well worth considerino-. 

It is impossible any longer to deny that the chief newspaper 
of that busy city is the New York Herald. No matter how much 
we may regret this fact, or be ashamed of it, no journalist can 
deny it. We do not attach much importance to the fact that 
Abraham Lincoln, the late lamented President of the United 
States, thought it worth while, during the dark days of the sum- 
mer of 1864, to buy its support at the price of the offer of the 
French mission. He was mistaken in supposing that this paper 
had any considerable power to change votes ; which was shown 
by the result of the Presidential election in the city of New York, 
where General McClellan had the great majority of thirty-seven 
thousand. Influence over opinion no paper can have which has 



AND THE NEW YOEK HERALD. 267 

itself no opinion, and cares for none. It is not as a vehicle of opin- 
ion that the Herald has importance, but solely as a vehicle of 
news. It is for its excellence, real or supposed, in this- particular, 
that eighty thousand people buy it every morning. Mr. Lincoln 
committed, as we cannot help thinking, a most egregious error 
and fault in his purchase of the editor of this paper, though he is 
in some degree excused by the fact that several leading Repub- 
licans, who were in a position to know better, advised or sanc- 
tioned the bargain, and leading journalists agreed not to censure 
it. Mr. Lincoln could not be expected to draw the distinction 
between the journalist and the writer of editorials. He pei'ceived 
the strength of this carrier-pigeon's pinions, but did not note the 
trivial character of the message tied to its leg. Thirty or forty 
war correspondents in the field, a circulation larger than any of 
its rivals, an advertising patronage equalled only by that of the 
London Times, the popularity of the paper in the army, the fre- 
quent utility of its maps and other elucidations, — these things 
imposed upon his mind; and his wife could tell him from personal 
observation, that the proprietor of this paper lived in a style of 
the most profuse magnificence, — maintaining costly establish- 
ments in town and country, horses, and yachts, to say nothing 
of that most expensive appendage to a reigning house, an heir 
apparent. 

Our friends in the English press tell us, that the Herald wasi 
one of the principal obstacles in their attempts to guide English 
opinions aright during the late struggle. Young men in the press 
would point to its editorials and say : " This is the principal 
newspaper in the Northern States ; this is the Times of America ; 
can a people be other than contemptible who prefer such a news- 
paper as this to journals so respectable and so excellent as the 
Times and Tribune, published in the same city?" "As to 
(American) journalism," says Professor Goldwin Smith, " the 
New York Herald is always kept before our eyes." That is to 
say, the editorial articles in the Herald; not that variety and ful- 
ness of intelligence which often compelled men who hated it most 
to get up at the dawn of day to buy it. A paper which can de- 
tach two or three men, after a battle, to collect the names of the 



268 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

killed and wounded, with orders to do only that, cannot lack pur- 
chasers in war time. Napoleon assures us that the whole art of 
war consists in having the greatest force at the point of contact. 
This rule applies to the art of journalism ; the editor of the 
Herald knew it, and had the means to put it in practice. 

Even here, at home, we find two opinions as to the cause of 
the Herald's vast success as a business. One of these opinions is 
this, — the Herald takes the lead because it is such a bad paper. 
The other opinion is, — the Herald takes the lead because it is 
such a good paper. It is highly important to know which of 
these two opinions is correct ; or, in other words, whether it is 
the Herald's excellences as a newspaper, or its crimes as a public 
teacher, which give it such general currency. Such success as 
this paper has obtained is a most influential fact upon the journal- 
ism of the whole country, as any one can see who looks over a file 
of our most flourishing daily papers. It is evident that our daily 
press is rapidly becoming Heraldized ; and it is well known that 
the tendency of imitation is to reproduce all of the copy except- 
ing alone that which made it worth copying. It is honorable to 
the American press that this rule has been reversed in the pres- 
ent instance. Some of the more obvious good points of the 
Herald have become universal, while as yet no creature has been 
found capable of copying the worst of its errors. 

If there are ten bakers in a town, the one that gives the best 
loaf for sixpence is sure, at last, to sell most bread. A man 
may puff up his loaves to a great size, by chemical agents, and 
so deceive the public for a time ; another may catch the crowd 
for a time by the splendor of his gilt sheaf, the magnitude of his 
signs, and the bluster of his advertising; and the intrinsically 
best baker may be kept down, for a time, by want of tact, or 
capital, or some personal defect. But let the competition last 
thirty years ! The gilt sheaf fades, the cavities in the big loaf 
are observed ; but the ugly little man round the corner comes 
steadily into favor, and all the town, at length, is noisy in the 
morning with the rattle of his carts. The particular caterer for 
our morning repast, now under consideration, has achieved a 
success of this kind, against every possible obstacle, and under 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 269 

every possible disadvantage. He liad no friends at the start, lie 
has made none since, and he has none now. He has had the 
support of no party or sect. On the contrary, he has won his 
object in spite of the active opposition of almost every organized 
body in the country, and the fixed disapproval of every public- 
spirited human being who has lived in the United States since 
he began his career. What are we to say of this ? Are we to 
say that the people of the United States are competent to judge 
of bread, but not of newspapers ? Are we to say that the people 
of the United States prefer evil to good ? We cannot assent to 
such propositions. 

Let us go back to the beginning, and see bow this man made 
his way to his present unique position. We owe his presence 
in this country, it seems, to Benjamin Franklin ; and he first 
smelt printer's ink in Boston, near the spot where young Ben 
Franklin blackened his fingers with it a hundred years before. 
Born and reared on the northeastern coast of Scotland, in a 
Roman Catholic family of French origin, he has a French intel- 
lect and Scotch habits. Frenchmen residing among us can 
seldom understand why this man should be odious, so French is 
he. A French naval officer was once remonstrated with for 
having invited him to a ball given on board a ship of war in 
New York harbor. " Why, what has he done ? " inquired the 
officer. " Has he committed murder ? Has he robbed, forged, 
or run away with somebody's wife ? " " No." " Why then 
should we not invite him ? " " He is the editor of the New York 
Herald." " Ah ! " exclaimed the Frenchman, — " the Herald ! 
it is a delightful paper, — it reminds me of my gay Paris." This, 
however, was thii'ty years ago, when Bennett was almost as 
French as Voltaire. He was a Frenchman also in this : though 
discarding, in his youth, the doctrines of his Church, and laughing 
them to scorn in early manhood, he still maintained a kind of 
connection with the Catholic religion. The whole of his power 
as a writer consists in his detection of the evil in things that are 
good, and of the falsehood in things that are true, and of the ri- 
diculous in things that are important. He began with the Roman 
Catholic Church, — " the holy Roman Catholic Church," as he 



270 . JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

once styled it, — adding in a parenthesis, "all of us Catholics are 
devilish holy." Another French indication is, that his early 
tastes were romantic literature and political economy, — a con- 
junction very common in France from the days of the " philoso- 
phers " to the present time. During our times of financial col- 
lapse, we have noticed, among the nonsense which he daily 
poured forth, some gleams of a superior understanding of the 
fundamental laws of finance. He appears to have understood 
1837 and 1857 better than most of his contemporaries. 

In a Catholic seminary he acquired the rudiments of knowl- 
edge, and advanced so far as to read Virgil. He also picked up 
a little French and Spanish in early life. The real instructors 
of his mind were Napoleon, Byron, and Scott. It was their 
fame, however, as much as their works, that attracted and daz- 
zled him. It is a strange thing, but true, that one of the strong- 
est desires of one of the least reputable of living men was, and 
is, to be admired and held in lasting honor by his fellow-men. 
Nor has he now the least doubt that he deserves their admiration, 
and will have it. In 1817, an edition of Franklin's Autobiogra- 
phy was issued in Scotland. It was his perusal of that little 
book that first directed his thoughts toward America, and which 
finally decided him to try his fortune in the New World. In 
May, 1819, being then about twenty years of age, he landed at 
Halifax, with less than five pounds in his purse, without a friend 
on the "Western Continent, and knowing no vocation except that 
of book-keeper. 

Between his landing at Halifax and the appearance of the first 
number of the Herald sixteen years elapsed ; during most of 
which he was a very poor, laborious, under-valued, roving writer 
for the daily press. At Halifax, he gave lessons in book-keeping 
for a few weeks, with little profit, then made his way along the 
coast to Portland, whence a schooner conveyed him to Boston. 
He was then, it appears, a soft, romantic youth, alive to the his- 
toric associations of the place, and susceptible to the varied, en- 
chanting loveliness of the scenes adjacent, on land and sea. He 
even expressed his feelings in verse, in the Childe Harold man- 
ner, — verse which does really show a poetic habit of feeling, 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 271 

with an occasional happiness of expression. At Boston he ex- 
perienced the last extremity of want. Friendless and alone he 
wandered about the streets, seeking work and finding none ; until, 
his small store of money being all expended, he passed two whole 
days without food, and was then only relieved by finding a shil- 
ling on the Common. He obtained at length the place of sales- 
man in a bookstore, from which he was soon transferred to the 
printing-house connected therewith, where he performed the 
duties of proof-reader. And here it Avas tliat he received his 
first lesson in the art of catering for the public mind. The firm 
in whose employment he was were more ambitious of glory than 
covetous of profit, and consequently published many works that 
were in advance of the general taste. Bankruptcy was their re- 
ward. The youth noted another circumstance at Boston. The 
newspaper most decried was Buckingham's Galaxy ; but it was 
also the most eagerly sought and the most extensively sold. 
Buckingham habitually violated the traditional and established 
decorums of the press ; he was familiar, chatty, saucy, auecdoti- 
cal, and sadly wanting in respect for the respectabilities of the 
most respectable town in the universe. Every one said that he 
was a very bad man, hut every one was exceedingly curious every 
Saturday to see " what the fellow had to say this week." If the 
youth could have obtained a sight of a file of James Franklin's 
Courant, of 1722, in which the youthful Benjamin first addressed 
the public, he would have seen a still more striking example of a 
journal generally denounced and universally read. 

Two years in Boston. Then he went to New York, where he 
soon met the publisher of a Charleston paper, who engaged him 
as translator from the Spanish, and general assistant. During 
the year spent by him at Charleston he increased his knowledge 
of the journalist's art. The editor of the paper with which he 
was connected kept a sail-boat, in which he was accustomed to 
meet arriving vessels many miles from the coast, and bring in his 
files of newspapers a day in advance of his rivals. The young 
assistant remembered this, and turned it to account in after years. 
At Chai'leston he was confronted, too, with the late peculiar insti- 
tution, and saw much to approve in it, nothing to condemn. From 



272 JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 

that day to this he has been but in one thing consistent, — con- 
tempt for the negro and for all white men interested in his wel- 
fare, approving himself in this a thorough Celt. If, for one brief 
period, he forced himself, for personal reasons, to veil this feeling, 
the feeling remained rooted within him, and soon resumed its 
wonted expression. He liked the South, and the people of the 
South, and had a true Celtic sympathy with their aristocratic pre- 
tensions. The salary of an assistant editor at that time was some- 
thing between the wages of a compositor and those of an office- 
boy. Seven dollars a week would have been considered rather 
liberal pay ; ten, munificent ; fifteen, lavish. 

Eeturning to New York, he endeavored to find more lucrative 
employment, and advertised his intention to open, near the site 
of the present Herald office, a " Permanent Commercial School," 
in which all the usual branches w^ere to be tauo-ht " in the indue- 
live method." His list of subjects was extensive, — " reading, 
elocution, penmanship, and arithmetic; algebra, astronomy, his- 
tory, and geography ; moral philosophy, commercial law, and po- 
litical economy ; English grammar, and composition ; and also, 
if required, the French and Spanish languages, by natives of 
those countries.''' Application was to be made to " J. G. B., 
148 Fulton Street." Applications, however, were not made in 
sufficient number, and the school, we believe, never came into ex- 
istence. Next, he tried a course of lectures upon Political Econ- 
omy, at the old Dutch Church in Ann Street, then not far from 
the centre of j^opulation. The public did not care to hear the 
young gentleman upon that abstruse subject, and the pecuniary 
result of the enterprise was not encouraging. He had no re- 
source but the ill-paid, unhonored drudgery of the press. 

For the next few^ years he was a paragraphist, reporter, scis- 
sorer, and man-of-all-work for the New York papers, daily and 
weekly, earning but the merest subsistence. He wrote then in 
very much the same style as when he afterwards amused and 
shocked the town in the infimt Herald ; only he was under re- 
straint, being a subordinate, and was seldom allowed to violate 
decorum. In point of industry, sustained and indefatigable in- 
dustry, he had no equal, and has never since had but one. One 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 273 

thing is to be specially noted as one of the chief and indispensable 
causes of his success. He had no vices. He never drank to ex- 
cess, nor gormandized, nor gambled, nor even smoked, nor in any 
other way wasted the vitality needed for a long and tough grap- 
ple with adverse fortune. What he once wrote of himself in the 
early Herald was strictly true: "I eat and drink to live, — 
not live to eat and drink. Social glasses of wine are my aversion ; 
public dinners are nly abomination ; all species of gormandizing, 
ray utter scorn and contempt. When I am hungry, I eat ; when 
thirsty, drink. Wine or viands taken for society, or to stimulate 
conversation, tend only to dissipation, indolence, poverty, con- 
tempt, and death." This was an immense advantage, which he 
had in common with several of the most mischievous men of 
modern times, — Calhoun, Charles XH., George IH., and others. 
Correct bodily habits are of themselves such a source of power, 
that the man who has them will be extremely likely to gain the 
day over competitors of ten times his general Avorth who have 
them not. i)r. Franklin used to say, that if Jack Wilkes had 
been as exemplary in this particular as George III., he would 
have turned the king out of his dominions. In several of the 
higher kinds of labor, such as law, physic, journalism, authorship, 
art, when the competition is close and keen, and many able men 
are near the summit, the question, who shall finally stand upon 
it, often resolves itself into one of physical endurance. This man 
Bennett would have lived and died a hireling scribe, if he had 
had even one of the common vices. Everything was against his 
rising, except alone an enormous capacity for labor, sustained by 
strictly correct habits. 

He lived much with politicians during these years of laborious 
poverty. Gravitating ahvays towards the winning side, he did 
much to bring into power the worst set of politicians we ever 
had, — those who " availed " themselves of the popularity of 
Andrew Jackson, and who were afterwards u.-ed by him for the 
purpose of electing Martin Van Buren. He became perfectly 
familiar with all that was petty and mean in the political strifes 
of the day, but without ever suspecting that there was anything 
in politics not petty and mean. He had no convictions of his 

12* K 



274 . JAJIES GORDON BENNETT 

own, and therefore not the least belief that any politician had. 
If the people were in earnest about the affairs of their country, 
(their country, not his,) it was because the people were not be- 
hind the scenes, were dupes of their party leaders, were a parcel 
of fools. In short, he acquired his insight into political craft in 
the school of Tammany Hall and the Kitchen Cabinet. His 
value was not altogether unappreciated by the politicians. He 
was one of those whom they use and flatter during the heat of 
the contest, and forget in the distribution of the spoils of victory. 

He made his first considerable hit as a journalist in the spring 
of 1828, when he filled the place of ."Washington correspondent 
to the New York Enquirer. In the Congressional Library, one 
day, he found an edition of Horace Walpole's Letters, which 
amused him very, much. " Why not," said he to himself, " try a 
few letters on a similar plan from this city, to be publi^-hed in 
New York ? " The letters appeared. Written in a. lively. man- 
ner, full of personal allusions, and. describing hidividuals respect- 
ing whom the public are always curious, — free also from offen- 
sive personalities, — the letters attracted much notice and were 
generally copied in the press. It is said that some of the ladies 
whose charms were described in those letters were indebted to 
them for husbands. Personalities of this kind .were a novelty 
then, and mere novelty goes a great way in journalism. At this 
period he produced almost every kind of composition known to 
periodical literature, — paragraphs and leading articles, poetry 
and love-stories, reports of trials, debates, balls, and police. cases ; 
his earnings ranging from five dollars a week to ten or twelve. 
If there had been then in New York one newspaper publisher 
who understood his business, the immense possible value of (his 
man as a journalist Avould have been perceived, and he would 
have been ■ secured, rewarded, and kept under some restraint. 
But there was no such man. There were three or four forcible 
writers for the press, but not one journalist.' 

During the great days of " The Courier and Inquirer," from 
1829 to 1832, when it was incomparably the best newspaper on 
the continent, James Gordon Bennett was its most efficient hand. 
It lost him in 1832, when the paper abandoned General Jackson 



AND THE KEW YORK HERALD. 275 

and took up Nicholas Biddle ; and in losing him lost its chance 
of retaining the supremacy among American newspapers to this 
day. We can truly say, that at that time journalism, as a thing 
by itself and for itself, had no existence in the United States. 
Newspapers were mere appendages of party ; and the darling ob- 
ject of each'journal was to be recognized as the organ of the party 
it supported. As to the public, the great public, hungry for in- 
teresting news, no one thought of it. Forty years ago, in the 
city of New York, a copy of a newspaper could not be bought 
for money. If any one wished to see a newspaper, he had either 
to go to the office and subscribe, or repair to a bar-room and buy 
a glass of something to drink, or bribe a carrier to rob one of his 
customers. The circulation of the Courier and Inquirer was con- 
sidered something marvellous when it printed thirty-five hundred 
copies a day, and its business was thought immense when its daily 
advertising averaged fifty-five dollars. It is not very unusual for 
a news[)aper now to receive for advertising, in one day, six hun- 
dred times that sum. Bennett, in the course of time, had a 
c!iance been given to him, would have made tlie Courier and In- 
quirer powerful enough to cast off all party ties ; and this he 
would have done merely by improving it as a vehicle of news. 
But he was kept down upon one of those ridiculous, tantalizing, 
corrupting salaries, which are a little more than a single man 
needs, but not enough for him to marry upon. This salary was 
increased by the proprietors giving him a small share in the 
small profits of the printing-office ; so that, after fourteen years 
of hard labor and Scotch economy, he found himself, on leaving 
the great paper, a capitalist to the extent of a few hundred dol- 
lars. The chief editor of the paper which he now abandoned 
sometimes lost as much in a single evening at tlie card-table. It 
probably never occurred to him tliat this poor, ill-favored Scotch- 
man was destined to destroy his paper and all the class of papers 
to which it belonged. Any one who now examines a file of the 
Courier and Inquirer of that time, and knows its interior circum- 
stances, will see plainly enough that the possession of this man 
was the vital element in its prosperity. lie alone knew the rudi- 
ments of his trade. He alone had the physical stamina, the inde- 



276 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

fatigable industry, the sleepless vigilance, tlie dexterity, tact, and 
audacity, needful for keeping up a daily newspaper in the face of 
keen competition. 

Unweaned yet from the politicians, he at once started a cheap 
party paper, " The Globe," devoted to Jackson and Van Buren. 
The party, however, did not rally to its support, and it had to 
contend with the opposition of party papers already existing, upon 
whose manor it was poaching. The Globe expired after an ex- 
istence of thirty days. Its proprietor, still untaught by such long 
experience, invested the wreck of his capital in a Philadelphia 
Jackson paper, and struggled desperately to gain for it a footing 
in the party. He said to Mr. Van Buren and to other leaders, 
Help me to a loan of twenty-five hundred dollars for two years, 
and I can establish my Peunsylvanian on a self-supporting basi:.^. 
The application was politely refused, and he was compelled t(» 
give up the struggle. The truth is, he was not implicitly trusted 
by the Jackson party. They admitted the services he had ren- 
dered ; but, at the same time, they were a little afraid of the vein 
of mockery that broke out so frequently in his writings. He 
■was restive in harness. He was devoted to the party, but ho 
was under no party illusions. He was fighting in the ranks as an 
adventurer or soldier of fortune. He fought well ; but would it 
do to promote a man to high rank who knew the game so well, 
and upon whom no man could get any hold ? To him, in his 
secret soul, IMartin Van Buren was nothing (as he often said) but 
a country lawyer, who, by a dexterous use of the party machinery, 
the well-timed death of De Witt Clinton, and General Jackson's 
frenzy in behalf of Mrs. Eaton, had come to be the chosen suc- 
cessor of the fiery chieftain. The canny Scotchman saw this 
with horrid clearness, and saw nothing more. Political chiefs do 
not like subalterns of this temper. Underneath the politician in 
Martin Van Buren there was the citizen, the patriot, the gentle- 
man, and the man, whose fathers were buried in American soil, 
whose children were to live under American institutions, who 
had, necessarily, an interest in the welfare and honor of the 
country, and whose policy, upon the whole, was controlled by 
that natural interest in his country's welfare and honor. To our 
mocking Celt nothing of this was apparent, nor has ever been. 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD, 277 

Hid education as a journalist was completed by the failure of 
his Philadelphia scheme. Returning to New York, he resolved 
to attempt no more to- rise by party aid, but henceforth have 
no master but the public. On the 6th of May, 1835, appeared 
the first number of the Morning Herald, price one cent. It was 
born in a cellar in Wall Street, — not a basement, but a verita- 
ble cellar. Some persons are still doing business in that region 
who remember going down into its subterranean office, and buy- 
ing copies of the new paper from lis editor, who used to sit at a 
desk composed of two flour-barrels and a piece of board, and who 
occupied the only chair in the establishment. For a considerable 
time his office contained absolutely nothing but his flour-barrel 
desk, one wooden chair, and a pile of Heralds. " I remember," 
writes Mr. William Gowans, the well-known bookseller of Nassau 
Street, " to have entered the subterranean office of its editor early 
in its career, and purchased a single copy of the paper, for which 
I paid the sum of one cent United States currency. On this occa- 
sion the proprietor, editor, and vendor was seated at his desk, 
busily engaged writing, and appeared to pay little or no attention 
to me as I entered. On making known my object in coming in, 
he requested me to put my money down on the counter, and help 
myself to a paper ; all this time he continuing his writing opera- 
tions. The office was a single oblong underground room ; its 
furniture consisted of a counter, which also served as a desk, con- 
structed from two flour-barrels, perhaps empty, standing apart 
from each other about four feet, with a single plank covering 
both ; a chair, placed in the centre, upon which sat the editor 
busy at his vocation, with an inkstand by his right hand ; on the 
end nearest the door were placed the papers for sale." 

Everything appeared to be against his success. It was one 
poor man in a cellar against the world. Already he had failed 
three times ; first, in 1825, when he attempted to establish a 
Sunday paper ; next, in 1832, when he tried a party journal ; 
recently, in Philadelphia. With great difficulty, and after many 
rebuffs, he had prevailed upon two young printers to print his pa- 
per and share its profits or losses, and he possessed about enough 
money to start the enterprise and sustain it ten days. The cheap- 



278 JAMES GORDON BENNETT . 

ness of his paper was no longer a novelty, for there was already 
a penny paper with a paying circulation. He had cut loose from 
all party ties, and he had no influential friends except those who 
had an interest in his failure. The great public, to which he 
made this last desperate appeal, knew him not even by name. 
The newsboy system scarcely existed ; and all that curious ma- 
chinery by which, in these days, a " new candidate for public 
favor " is placed, at no expense, on a thousand , news-stands, had 
not been thought of. There he was alone in his cellar, without 
clerk, errand-boy, or assistant of any kind. For many weeks he 
did with his own hands everything, — editorials, news, reporting, 
receiving advertisements, and even writing advertisements for 
persons " unaccustomed to composition." He expressly an- 
nounced that advertisers could have their advertisements written 
for them at the office, and this at a time when there' was no one 
to do it but himself. The extreme cheapness of the paper ren- 
dered him absolutely dependent upon his advertisers, and yet 
he dared not charge more than fifty cents for sixteen lines, and 
he offered to insert sixteen lines for a whole year for thirty dol- 
lars. . ' 
■ He at once produced an eminently salable article. If just 
such a paper were to appear to-day, or any day, in any large 
city of the world, it would instantly find a multitude of readers. 
It was a very small sheet, — four little pages of four columns 
each, — much better pi-inted than the Herald, now. is, and not a 
waste line in it. Everything drew, as the sailors say. There 
was not much scissoring in it, — the scissors have never been 
much esteemed in the Herald office, — but the little that there 
was all told. upon the general effect of the sheet. There is a 
story current in newspaper offices that the first few numbers of 
the Herald were strictly decorous and "respectable," but that, the 
editor, finding the public indifferent and his money running low, 
changed his tactics, and filled his paper with scurrility and inde- 
cency, which immediately made it a paying enterprise. No such 
thing. The first numbers were essentially of the same character 
as the number published this morning. They had the same ex- 
cellences and the same defects : in the news department, immense 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 279 

industry, vigilance, and tact ; in the editorial columns, the vein 
of Mephistophelean mockery which has puzzled and sliocked so 
many good people at home and abroad. A leading topic then 
was a certain Matthias, one of those long-bearded religious impos- 
tors who used to appear from time to time. The first article in 
the first number of the Herald was a minute account of the origin 
and earlier life of the fellow, — just the thing for the paper, and 
the sure method of exploding him. The first editorial article, 
too, was perfectly in character : — 

" In debuts of this kind," said the editor, " many talk of principle — 
political ijrinclple, party principle — as a sort of steel-trap to catch the 
public. We mean to be perfectly understood on this point, and there- 
fore openly disclaim all steel-traps, — all principle, as It Is called, — 
all party, — all politics. Our only guide shall be good, sound, practi- 
cal, common-sense, applicable to the business and bosoms of men en- 
gaged In every-day life. We shall support no party, be the organ of 
no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candi- 
date, from President down to constable. We shall endeavor to record 
facts on every public and proper subject, stripped of verbiage and 
coloring, with comments, when suitable, just. Independent, fearless, and 
good-tempered. ; If the Herald wants the mere expansion which many 
journals possess, we shall try to make It up in industry, good taste, 
brevity, variety, point, piquancy, and cheapness." 

He proceeded immediately to giv6 a specimen of the "com- 
ments" thus described, in the form of a review of an Annual 
Register just published. The Register informed him that there 
were 1,492 "rogues in the State Prison." His comment was: 
" But God only knows how many out of prison, preying upon 
the community, in the shape of gamblers, blacklegs, speculators, 
and politicians." He learned from the Register that the poor- 
house contained G,o47 paupers ; to which he added, "and double 
the number going there as fast as indolence and intemperance can 
carry them." The first numbers were filled' with nonsense and 
gossip about the city of New York, to which his poverty confined 
him. He had no boat with which to board arriving ships, no 
share in the pony express from Washington, and no correspond- 
ents in other cities. All he could do was to catch the floating 
gossip, scandal, and folly of the town, and present as much of 



280 JAMES GORDON BEN^NETT 

them every day as one man could get upon paper by sixteen 
hours' labor. He laughed at everything and everybody, — not 
excepting himself and his squint eye, — and, though his jokes 
were not always good, they were generally good enough. People 
laughed, and were willing to expend a cent the next day to see 
what new folly the man would commit or relate. We all like 
to read about our own neighborhood: this paper gratified the 
propensity. 

The man, we repeat, really had a vein of poetry in him, and 
the first numbers of the Herald show it. He had occasion to 
mention, one day, that Broadway was about to be paved with 
wooden blocks. This was not a very promising subject for a 
poetical comment; but he added: "When this is done, every 
vehicle will have to wear sleigh-bells as in sleighing times, and 
Broadway will be so quiet that you can pay a compliment to a 
lady, in passing, and she will hear you." Tljis was nothing in 
itself; but here was a man wrestling with fate in a cellar, who 
could turn you out two hundred such paragraphs a week, the 
year round. Many men can growl in a cellar ; this man could 
laugh, and keep laughing, and make the floating population of a 
city laugh with him. It must be owned, too, that he had a little 
real insight into the nature of things around him, — a little 
Scotch sense, as well as an inexhaustible fund of French vivacity. 
Alluding, once, to the "hard money" cry, by which the lying 
politicians of the day carried elections, he exploded that nonsense 
in two lines: "If a man gets the wearable or the eatable he 
wants, what cares he whether he has gold or paper-money?" 
He devoted two sentences to the Old School and New School 
Presbyterian controversy : " Great trouble among the Presbyte- 
rians just now. The question in dispute is, whether or not a man 
can do anything towards saving his own soul." He had, also, an 
ai'ticle upon the Methodists, in which he said that the two relig- 
ions nearest akin were the Methodist and the Roman Catholic. 
We should add to these trifling specimens the fact, that he uni- 
formly maintained, from 1835 to the crash of 1837, that the 
prosperity of the country was unreal, and would end in disaster. 
Perhaps we can afford space for a single specimen of bis way of 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 281 

treating this subject ; although it can be fully appreciated only 
by those who are old enough to remember the rage for land 
speculation ^Yhich prevailed in 1836 : — 

" The Rich Poor — the Pook Rich. — ' I have made S 50,000 
since last January,' said one of these real-estate speculators to a 
friend. 

" ' The deuse you have,' said the other, looking up in astonishment- 
' Why, last January you were not worth a twenty-doUar bill.' 

" ' I know that ; but I now calculate I 'm worth full S 50,000, if not 
$ 60,000.' 

" ' How have you made it ? ' 

" ' By speculating in real estate. I bought three hundred lots at 
Groose Island at S 150 apiece ; they are now worth $ 400. I would not 
sell them for S 350 apiece, I assure you.' 

" ' Do you think so ? ' 

" ' Sartain. I have two hundred and fifty lots at Blockhead's Point, 
worth S 150 a piece ; some on them are worth S 200. I have one hun- 
dred lots at Jackass Inlet, worth at least S 100, at the very lowest cal- 
culation. In short, I 'm worth a hull S 60,000.' 

" ' Well, I 'm glad to hear it. You can pay me now the S 500 you 
have owed me for these last four years. There 's yom- note, I believe,' 
said he, handing the speculator a worn piece of paper that had a piece 
of writing upon it. 

" The specidator looked blank at this. ' Oh I yes — my — now — 
I 'd like — suppose,' but the words coidd not form themselves into a 
perfect sentence. 

" ' I want the money very much," said the other ; ' I have some pay- 
ments to make to-morrow.' 

" ' Why, you don't want cash for it surely.' 

" ' Yes, but I do. You say you are worth S 60,000, — surely S 500 
is but a trifle to pay ; do let me have the cash on the nail, if you 
please.' 

" ' Oh ! — bv — well — now — do tell — reallv, I have not cot the 
money at present.' 

" ' So you can't pay it, eh ? A man worth S 60,000, and can't pay 
an old debt of S500?' 

"'Oh! yes I can — I'll — I'll — just give you my note for it at 
ninety days.' 

" ' The D— 1 you will 1 A man worth 5 60,000. and can't pay S 500 
for ninety days ! what do you mean ? ' 



282 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

" ' Well now, my dear sir, I 'm worth what I say. I can pay you. 
There 's my property,' spreading out half a dozen very beautiful litho- 
graphs ; ' but really I can't raise that amount at present. Yesterday, 
I had to give three per cent a month for $ 4,000 to save my whole for- 
tune. I had to look out for the mortgages. Take my note ; you can 
get it discounted for three per cent.' 

" ' No, I can't. If you will give me S 250 for the debt, I shall give 
the other half to pay the interest on your mortgages.' .... 

" Whether the proposition has been accepted we shall know to-mor- 
row; but we have many such rich people." — Herald, Oct. 28, 1836. 

But it was not such things as these that established the Herald. 
Confined as he was to the limits of a single town, and being com- 
pelled to do everything with his own hands, he could not have 
much in his columns that we should now call " news." But what 
is news? The answer to that question involves the whole art, 
mysterj', and history of journalism. The time was when news, 
signified the doings of the king and his court. This was the 
staple of the first news-letter writers, who were employed by, 
great lords, absent from court, to send them court intelligence. 
To this was soon added news of the doings of other kings and 
courts ; and from that day to this the word neics has been con- 
tinually gaining increase of meaning, until now it includes all 
that the public are curious to know, which may be told without 
injury to the public or injustice to individuals. While this man 
was playing fantastic tricks before high Heaven, his serious 
thoughts were absorbed in schemes to make his paper the great 
vehicle of news. Early in the second month, while he w^as still 
losing money every day, he hit upon a new kind of news, which 
perhaps had more to do with the final success of the Herald than 
any other single thing. His working day, at that time, was six- 
teen or seventeen hours. In the morning, from' five to eight, he 
was busy, in the quiet of his room, \vith those light, nonsensical 
paragraphs and editorials which made his readers smile in spite 
of themselves. During the usual business hours of the morning, 
he was in his cellar, over his flour-barrel desk, engaged in the or- 
dinary routine of editorial work ; not disdaining to sell the morn- 
ing paper, write advertisements, and take the money for them. 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 283 

About one o'clock, having provided abundant copy for the com- 
positors, he sallied forth into Wall Street, picking up material for 
his stock-tables and subjects for paragraphs. From four to six 
he was at his office again, winding up the business of the day. 
In the evening he was abroad, — at theatre, concert, ball, or pub- 
lic meeting, — absorbing fresh material for his paper. He con- 
verted himself, as it were, into a medium through which the gos- 
sip, scandal, fun, and nonsense of this great town were daily 
conveyed back to it for its amusement; just as a certain popular 
preacher is reported to do, who spends six days in circulating 
among his parishioners, and on the seventh tells them all that 
they have taught him. 

Now Wall Street, during the years that General Jackson was 
disturbing the financial system by his insensate fury against the 
United States Bank, was to journalism what the Army of the 
Potomac was in tlie year 1864. The crash of 1837 was full two 
years in coming on, during which the money market was always 
deranged, and moneyed men were anxious and puzzled. The 
public mind, too, was gradually drawn to the subject, until Wall 
Street was the point upon which all eyes were fixed. The editor 
of the Herald was the first American journalist to avail himself 
of this state of things. It occurred to him, when his paper had 
been five weeks in existence, to give a little account every day 
of the state of affairs in Wall Sti'eet, — the fluctuations of the 
money market and their causes, — the feeling and gossip of the 
street. He introduced this feature at the moment when General 
Jackson's embroilment with tlie French Chambers was at its 
height, and when the return of the American Minister was hour- 
ly expected. Some of our readers may be curious to see the 
first " money article " ever published in the United States. It 
was as follows : — 

" Commercial. ' ' 

" Stocks yesterday maintained their prices during the session of tlie 
Board, several going up. Utica went up 2 per cent ; the others sta- 
tionary. Large quantities were sold. After the Board adjourned and 
the news from France was talked over, the fancy stocks generally went 
down 1 to 1^ per cent ; other stocks quite firm. A rally was made by 



284 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

the bulls in the evening, under the trees, but it did not succeed. There 
will be a great fight in the Board to-day. The good people up town 
are anxious to know what the brokers think of Mr. Livingston. We 
shall find out, and let them know. 

" The cotton and flour market rallied a little. The rise of cotton in 
Liverpool drove it up here a cent or so. The last shippers will make 
2-^ per cent. Many are endeavoring to produce a belief that there 
will be a war. If the impression prevails, naval stores will go up a 
good deal. Every eye is outstretched for the Constitution. Hudson, 
of the Merchants' News Room, says he will hoist out the firet fla"-. 
Gilpin, of the Exchange News Room, says he will have her name 
down in his Room one hour before his competitor. The latter claims 
having beat Hudson yesterday by an hour and ten minutes in chroni- 
cling the England." — iJeraW, June 13, 1835. 

This was his first attempt. The money article constantly 
lengthened and increased in importance. It won for the little 
paper a kind of footing in brokers' offices and bank parlors, and 
provided many respectable persons with an excuse for buying it. 

At the end of the third month, the daily receipts equalled the 
daily expenditures. A cheap police reporter was soon after en 
gaged. In the course of the next month, the printing-office was 
burnt, and the printers, totally discouraged, abandoned the enter- 
prise. The editor — who felt that he had caught the public ear, as 
lie had — contrived, by desperate exertions, to " rake the Herald 
out of the fire," as he said, and went on alone. Four months 
after, the great fire laid Wall Street low, and all the great busi- 
ness streets adjacent. Here was his first real opportunity as a 
journalist ; and how he improved it ! — spending one half of 
every day among the ruins, note-book in hand, and the other half 
over his desk, writing out what he had gathered. He spread be- 
fore the public reports so detailed, unconventional, and graphic, 
that a reader sitting at his ease in his own room became, as it 
were, an eyewitness of those appalling scenes. His accounts of 
that fire, and of the events following it, are such as Defoe would 
have given if he had been a New York reporter. Still strug- 
gling for existence, he went to the expense (great then) of pub- 
lishing a picture of the burning Exchange, and a map of the burnt 
district. American journalism was born amid the roaring flames 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 285 

of the great fire of 1835 ; and no true journalist will deny, that 
from that day to this, whenever any very remarkable event has 
taken place in the city of New York, the Herald reports of it 
have generally been those which cost most money and exhibited 
most of the spirit and detail of the scene. For some years every 
dollar that the Herald made was expended in news, and, to this 
hour, no other journal equals it in daily expenditure for intelli- 
gence. If, to-morrow, we were to have another great fire, like 
that of thirty years ago, this paper would have twenty-five men 
in the streets gathering particulars. 

But so difficult is it to establish a daily newspaper, that at the 
end of a year it was not yet certain that the Herald could con- 
tinue. A lucky contract with a noted pill-vender gave it a great 
lift about that time;* and in the fifteenth month, the editor ven- 

* We copy the following from Mr. Gowan's narrative : " Dr. Benjamin Bran- 
dreth, of well and wide-spread reputation, and who has made more happy and 
comfortable, for a longer or shorter time, as the case ma^' be, by his prescrip- 
tions than any other son of jEscuIapius, hailed me one day as I jumped from si 
railroad car passing up and along the shores of the Hudson River, and immedi- 
ately commenced the following narrative. He held in his hand a copy of the 
New York Herald. ' Do you know,' said he, holding up the paper to my face, 
'that it was by and through your agency that this paper ever became success- 
ful?' I replied in the negative. ' Then,' continued he, ' I will unfold the secret 
to you of how you became instrumental in this matter. Shortly after my 
arrival in America, I began looking about me how I was to dispose of my pills 
by agents and other means. Among others, I called upon you, then a bookseller 
in Chatham Street. After some conversation on the subject of my errand, a 
contract was soon entered into between us, — you to sell and I to furnish the 
said pills; but,' continued he, ' these pills will be of no use to me or any one else 
unless they can be made known to the public, or rather the great herd of the 
people; and that can only be done bj' advertising through some paper which 
goes into the hands of the many. Can you point out to me any such paper, 
published in the city? ' After a short pause I in substance said that there had 
lately started a small penny paper, which had been making a great noise during 
its existence ; and I had reason to believe it had obtained a very considerable 
circulation among that class of people which he desired to reach by advertising, 
and so concluded that it would be the best paper in the city for his purpose, 
provided he could make terms with the owner, who, 1 had no doubt, would bo 
well disposed, as in all probability he stood in need of patronage of this kind. 
'I immediately,' continued the doctor, 'adopted your advice, went directly to 
Mr. Bennett, made terms with him for advertising, and for a long time paid him 
a very considerable sum weekly for the use of his columns, which tended 
greatly to add to both his and my own treasury. The editor of the Herald 



286 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

tured to raise Lis price to two cents. From that day lie had a 
business, and nothing remained for him but to go on as he had 
begun. He did so. The paper exhibits now the. same qualities 
as it did then, — immense expenditure and vigilance in getting 
news, and a reckless disregard of principle, truth, and decency 
hi its. editorials. 

Almost from the first month of its existence, this paper was 
deemed inflimous by the very public that supported it. We can 
well remember when people bought it on the sly, and blushed 
when they were caught reading it, and when t!ie man in a 
country place who subscribed for it intended by that act to dis- 
tinctly enroll himself as one of the ungodly. , Journalists should 
thoroughly consider this most remarkable fact. We have had 
plenty of infamous papers, but they have all been short-lived but 
this. This one has lasted. After thirty-one years of life, it 
appears to be almost as flourishing to-day as ever. The fore- 
most of its rivals has a little more than half its circulation, and 
less than half its income. A marble palace is rising to receive it, 
and its proprietor fares as sumptuously every day as the ducal 
family who furnished him with his middle name. 

Let us see how the Herald acquired its ill name. We shall 
then know why it is still so profoundly odious ; for it has never 
changed, and can never change, while its founder controls it. 
Its peculiarities are his peculiarities. 

He came into collision, first of all, with the clergy and people 
of his own Church, the Roman Catholic. Thirty yenvs ago, as 
some of our readers may remember, Catholics and Protestants 
had not yet learned to live together in the same community with 
perfect tolerance of one anothei-'s opinions and usages ; and there 
■were still some timid persons who feared the rekindling of the 
fagot, and the supremacy of the Pope in the United States. A 
controversy growing out of these apprehensions had been pro- 

nfterwards acknowledged to me that but for his advertising patronage lie would 
have been compelled to collapse. Hence,' said he, 'had I never ciilled on you, 
in all probability I shonld not liave had my attention turned to the New York 
Herald; and, as a consequence, that sheet would never have had my advertis- 
ing; and that paper would have been a thing of the past, and perhaps entirely 
fora;ottea.' " 



i 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 287 

ceeding for some time in the newspapers when this imputlient 
little Herald first appeared. The new-comer joined in tlie fray, 
and sided arainst the Church in which he was horn ; but laid 
about him in a manner which disgusted both parties. For ex- 
ample : — 

"As a Catholic, we call upon the Cathohc Bishop and clergy of New 
York to come forth from the darkness, folly, and superstition of the 
tenth century. They live in the nineteenth. There can be no mis- 
tiike about it, — they will be convinced of this fact if they look into 
the almanac 

" But though we want a thorough reform, we do not wish them to 
discard their greatest absurdities at the first breath. We know the 
difficulty of the task. Disciples, such as the Irish are, will stick with 
greater pertinacity to absurdities and nonsense than to reason and 
common sense. We have no objection to the doctrine of Transubstan- 
tiatlon being tolerated for a few years to come. , We may for a while 
indulge ourselves in the delicious luxury of creating and eating our 
Divinity. A peculiar taste of this kind, like smoking tobacco or drink- 
ing whiskey, cannot be given up all at once. The ancient Egyptians, 
for many years after they had lost every ti-ace of the intellectual char- 
acter of their religion, yet worshipped and adored the ox, the bull, and 
the crocodile. They had not discovered the art, as we Catholics have 
done, of making a God o,ut of bread, and of adoring and eating him at 
one and the same moment. This latter piece of sublimity or religious 
cookery (we don't know which) was reserved for the educated and 
talented clergy from the tenth up to the nineteenth century. Yet we 
do not advise the immediate disturbance of this venerable piece of 
rottenness and absurdity. It must be retained, as we would retain 
carefully the tooth of a saint or the jawbone of a martyr, till the natu- 
ral progress of reason in the Irish mind shall be able, silently and 
imperceptibly, to drop it among the forgotten rubbish of his early 
loves, or his more youthful riots and rows. 

" There must be a thorough reformation and revolution in the 
American Catholic Church. Education must be more attended to. 
We never knew one priest who believed that he ate the Divinity when 
he took the Eucharist. If we must have a Pope, let us have a Pope 
of our own, — an American Pope, an intellectual, intelligent, and 
moral Pope, — not such a decrepit, licentious, stupid, Italian blockhead 
as the College of Cardinals at Rome condescends to give the Christian 
world of Europe." 



288 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

This might be good advice ; but no serious Protestant, at that 
day, could relish the tone in which It was given. Threatening 
letters were sent in from irate and illiterate Irishmen ; the Her- 
ald was denounced from a Catholic pulpit ; its carriers were 
assaulted on their rounds ; but the paper won no friends from the 
side which it affected to espouse. Every one felt that to this 
man nothing was sacred, or august, or venerable, or even serious. 
He Avas like an unbeliever in a party composed of men of various 
sects. The Baptist could fairly attack an Episcopalian, because 
lie had convictions of his own that could be assaulted ; but this 
stranger, who believed nothing and respected nothing, could not 
be hit at all. The result would naturally be, that the whole 
company would turn upon him as upon a common foe. 

So in politics. Perhaps the most serious and sincere article he 
ever wrote on a political subject was one that appeared in No- 
vember, 1836, in which he recommended the subversion of re- 
publican institutions and the election of an emperor. If he ever 
had a political conviction, we believe he expressed it then. After 
a rigmarole of Roman history and Augustus Cfesar, he proceeded 
thus : — 

" Shall we not profit by these examples of history ? Let us, for the 
sake of science, art, and civilization, elect at this election General Jack- 
son, General Harrison, Martin Van Buren, Hugh White, or Anybody, 
we care not whom, the Emperor of this great Republic for life, and 
have done with this eternal turmoil and confusion. Perhaps Mr. Van 
Buren would be the best Augustus Cajsar. He is sufficiently corrupt, 
selfish, and heartless for that dignity. He has a host of favorites that 
will easily form a Senate. He has a court in preparation, and the 
Praetorian bands In array. He can pick up a LIvIa anywhere. He 
has violated every pledge, adopted and abandoned every creed, been 
for and against every measure, is a believer in all religions by turns, 
and, like the first Caesar, has always been a republican and taken care 
of number one. He has called Into action all the ragged adventurers 
from every class, and raised their lands, stocks, lots, and places without 
end. He is smooth, agreeable, oily, as Octavianus was. He has a couple 
of sons, also, who might succeed him and preserve the imperial line. 
We may be better off under an Emperor, — we could not be worse off 
as a nation than we are now. Besides, who knows but Van Buren is 
of the blood of the gi-eat Julius himself? That great man conquered 



AXD THE NEW YOKK HERALD. 289 

all Gaul and Helvetia, which in those days comprised Holland. Cains 
Julius Caasai" may thus have laid the foundation of a royal line to be 
transmitted to the West. Tliere is a prophecy in Virgil's ' PoUio ' evi- 
dently alluding to Van. But of this another day. 

A man who writes in tliis way may liave readers, but he can 
Lave no friends. An event occurred in his first year which re- 
vealed this fact to him in an extremely disagreeable manner. 
There was then upon the New York stage a notoriously dissolute 
actor, who, after outraging the feelings of his wife in all the usual 
modes, completed his infamy by denouncing her from the stage 
of a crowded theatre. The Herald took her part, which would 
naturally have been the popular side. But when the actor re- 
torted by going to the office of the Herald and committing upon 
its proprietor a most violent and aggravated assault, accompany- 
ing his blows with acts of peculiar indecency, it plainly appeared, 
that the sympathies of the public were wholly with the actor, — 
not with the champion of an injured woman. His hand had been 
against every man, and in his hour of need, when he was greatly 
in the right, every heart was closed against him. Not the less, 
however, did the same public buy his paper, because it contained 
what the public wanted, i. e. the news of the day, vividly ex- 
hibited. 

The course of this curious specimen of our kind during the 
late war was perfectly characteristic. During the first two years 
of the war he was inclined to think that the Rebels would be suc- 
cessful so far as to win over the Democratic party to their side, 
and thus constitute Jefferson Davis President of the United 
States. If he had any preference as to the result of the contest, 
it was probably this. If the flag of the United States had been 
trailed in the mud of Nassau Street, followed by hooting ruffians 
from the Sixth Ward, and the symbol of the Rebellion had floated 
in its stead from the cupola of the City Hall, saluted by Captain 
Rynders's gun, it would not have cost this isolated alien one pang, 
— unless, perchance, a rival newspaper had been the first to an- 
nounce the fact, lliat, indeed, would have cut him to the heart. 
Acting upon the impression that the Rebellion, in some way, 
would triumph, he gave it all the support possible, and continued 
13 s 



290 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

to do so until it appeared certain that, whatever the issue of the 
strife, the South was lost for a long time as a patron of New 
York papers. 

The key to most of the political vagaries of this paper is given 
in a sinsfle sentence of one of its first numbers : " We have never 
been in a minority, and ive never shall be." In his endeavors to 
act upon this lofty principle, he was sadly puzzled during the war, 
— so difficult was it to determine which way the cat would finally 
jump. He held himself ready, however, to jump with it, which- 
ever side the dubious animal might select. At the same time, he 
never for an instant relaxed his endeavors to obtain the earliest 
and fullest intelligence from the seat of war. Never perhaps did 
any journal in any country maintain so great an expenditure for 
news. Every man in the field representing that paper was more 
than authorized — he was encouraged and commanded — to in- 
cur any expense whatever that might be necessary either in get- 
ting or forwarding intelligence. There were no rigid or grudg- 
ing scrutiny of reporters' drafts ; no minute and insulting inquiries 
respecting the last moments of a horse ridden to death in the ser- 
vice ; no grumbling about the precise terms of a steamboat 
charter, or a special locomotive. A reporter returning from the 
army laden with information, procured at a lavish expense, was 
received in the office like a conqueror coming home from a victo- 
rious campaign, and he went forth again full of courage and zeal, 
knowing well that every man employed on the Herald was ad- 
vancing himself when he served the paper well. One great se- 
cret of success the proprietor of the Herald knows better than 
most ; — he knows how to get out of those who serve him all 
there is in them ; he knows how to reward good service ; he 
knows a man's value to him. There is no newspaper office in 
the world where real journalistic efficiency is more certain to 
meet prompt recognition and just reward than in this. Not much 
may be said to a laborious reporter about the liits he is making ; 
but, on some Saturday afternoon, when he draws his salary, he 
finds in his hands a larger amount than usual. He hands it 
back to have the mistake corrected, and he is informed that his 
salary is raised. 



AND THE XEW YORK HERALD. 291 

The Herald, too, pystematically prepares the way for its re- 
porters. Some of our readers may remember how lavishly this 
paper extolled General McClellan during the time of his glory, 
and indeed as long as he held the chief command. One of the 
results of this policy was, that, while the reporters of other papers 
were out in the cold, writing in circumstances the most incon- 
venient, those of the Herald, besides being supplied with the best 
information, were often writing in a Avarni apartment or commo- 
dious tent, not far from head-quarters or at head-quarters. As 
long as General Butler held a command which gave him control 
over one of the chief sources of news, the Herald hoarded its 
private grudge against him ; but the instant he was removed from 
command, the Herald was after him in full cry. If, to-morrow, 
the same General should be placed in a position which should 
render his office a source of important intelligence, we should prob- 
ably read in the Herald the most glowing eulogiums of his career 
and character. 

What are we to think of a man who is at once so able and so 
false ? It would be incorrect to call him a liar, because he is 
wanting in that sense of truth by violating which a man makes 
himself a liar. We cannot call him a traitor, for his heart knows 
no country ; nor an infidel, for all the serious and high concerns 
of man are to him a jest. Defective is the word to apply to such 
as he. As far as he goes, he is good ; and if the commodity in 
which he deals were cotton or sugar, we could commend his en- 
terprise and tact. He is like the steeple of a church in New 
York, which was built up to a certain height, when the material 
gave out, and it was hastily roofed in, leaving the tipper half of 
the architect's design unexecuted. That region of the mind where 
conviction, the sense of truth and honor, public spirit and patriot- 
ism have their sphere, is in this man mere vacancy. But, we re- 
peat, as far as he is built up, he is very well constructed. Visit 
him : you see before you a quiet-mannered, courteous, and good- 
natured old gentleman, who is on excellent terms with himself 
and with the world. If you are a poor musician, about to give a 
concert, no editor is more likely than he to lend a favorable ear 
to your request for a few lines of preliminary notice. The per- 



292 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

sons about him have been very long in his employment, and to 
some of them he has been munificently liberal. The best of them 
appear to be really attached to his person, as well as devoted to 
his service, and they rely on him as sailors rely on a captain who 
has brought them safe through a thousand storms. He has the 
Celtic virtue of standing by those who stand by him developed to 
the uttermost degree. Many a slight f;\vor bestowed upon him 
in his days of obscurity he has recompensed a thousand-fold since 
he has had the power to do so. We cannot assign a very exalted 
rank in the moral scale to a trait which some of the lowest races 
possess in an eminent degree, and which easily runs into narrow- 
ness and vice ; nevertheless, it is akin to nobleness, and is the 
nearest approach to a true generosity that some strong natures 
can attain. 

What are we to say of the public that has so resolutely sus- 
tained this paper, which the outside world so generally condemns? 
We say this. Every periodical that thrives supplies the public 
with a certain description of intellectual commodity, which the 
public is willing to pay for. The New York Ledger, for exam- 
ple, exists by furnishing stories and poetry adapted to the taste of 
the greatest number of the people. Our spirited friends of The 
Nation and Round Table supply criticism and that j^ortion of the 
news which is of special interest to the intellectual class. The 
specialty of the daily newspaper is to give that part of the news 
of the day which interests the whole public. A complete news- 
paper contains more than this ; but it ranks in the world of jour- 
nalism exactly in the degree to which it does this. The grand 
object of the true journalist is to be fullest, promptest, and most 
correct on the one uppermost topic of the hour. That secured, 
he may neglect all else. The paper that does this oftenest is the 
paper that will find most purchasers ; and no general excellence, 
no array of information on minor or special topics, will ever atone 
for a deficiency on the subject of most immediate and universal 
interest. During the war this fundamental truth of journalism 
w^as apparent to every mind. In time of peace, it is less appar- 
ent, but not less a truth. In the absence of an absorbing topic, 
general news rises in importance, until, in the dearth of the dog- 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 293 

days, the great cucumber gets into type ; but the great point of 
competition is still the same, — to be fullest, quickest, and most 
correct upon the subject most interesting at the moment. 

But every periodical, besides its specialty on which it lives, 
gives its readers something more. It need not, but it does. The 
universal Ledger favors its readers with many very excellent es- 
says, written for it by distinguished clergymen, editors, and au- 
thors, and gives its readers a great deal of sound advice in other 
departments of the paper. It need not do this ; these features do 
not materially affect the sale of the paper, as its proprietor well 
knows. The essays of such men as Mr. Everett and Mr. Ban- 
croft do not increase the sale of the paper one hundred copies a 
week. Those essays are read and admired, and contribute their 
quota toward the education of the people, and reflect honor upon 
the liberal and enterprising man who publishes them; but scarcely 
any one buys the paper for their sake. People almost univer-' 
sally buy a periodical for the special thing which it has under- 
taken to furnish ; and it is by supplying this special thing that an 
editor attains his glorious privilege and opportunity of addressing 
a portion of the people on other topics. This opportunity he may 
neglect ; he may abuse it to the basest purposes, or improve it to 
the noblest, but whichever of these things he does, it does not 
materially affect the prosperity of his paper, — always supposing 
that his specialty is kept up with the requisite vigor. We have 
gone over the whole history of journalism, and we find this to be 
its Law of Nature, to which there ai"e only apparent exceptions. 

All points to this simple conclusion, which we firmly believe to 
be the golden rule of journalism : — that daily newspaper which 
has the best corps of reporters, and handles them best, necessarily 
takes the lead of all competitors. 

There are journalists who say (we have often heard them in 
conversation) that this is a low view to take of their vocation. 
It is of no importance whether a view is high or low, provided it 
is correct. But we cannot agree with them that this is a low 
view. We think it the highest possible. Regarded as instruc- 
tors of the people, they wield for our warning and rebuke, for 
our encouragement and reward, an instrument which is like the 



294 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

dread thunderbolt of Jove, at once the most terrible and the most 
beneficent, — publicity. Some years ago, a number of ill-favored 
and prurient women and a number of licentious men formed 
themselves into a kind of society for the purpose of devising and 
promulgating a theory to justify the gratification of unbridled 
lust. They vpere called Free-Lovers. To have assailed their 
nightly gatherings in thundering editorial articles would have 
only advertised them ; but a detailed report of their proceedings 
in the Tribune scattered these assemblies in a few days, to meet 
no more except in secret haunts. Eecently, we have seen the 
Fenian wind-bag first inflated, then burst, by mere publicity. 
The Strong Divorce Case, last year, was a nauseous dose, which 
we would have gladly kept out of the papers ; but since it had to 
appear, it was a public benefit to have it given, Herald-fashion, 
with all its revolting particulars. What a punishment to the 
guilty ! what a lesson to the innocent ! what a v/arning to the un- 
detected ! How much beneficial reflection and conversation it ex- 
cited ! How neces.-ary, in an age of sensation morals and free- 
love theories, to have self-indulgence occasionally exhibited in all 
its hideous nastiness, and without any of its fleeting, deceptive, 
imaginary charms ! The instantaneous detection of the Otero 
murderers last autumn, and of the robbers of Adams's express- 
car last winter, as related in the daily papers, and the picture 
presented by them of young Ketchura seated at work in the shoe- 
shop of Sing-Sing Prison, were equivalent to the addition of a 
thousand men to the police force. Herein lies the power of such 
a slight person as the editor of the Herald. It is not merely that 
he impudently pulls your nose, but he pulls it in the view of a 
million people. 

Nor less potent is publicity as a means of reward. How many 
brave hearts during the late war felt themselves far more than 
repaid for all their hardships in the field and their agony in the 
hospital by reading their names in despatches, or merely in the 
list of wounded, and thinking of the breakfixst-tables far away at 
which that name had been spied out and read with mingled ex- 
ultation and pity. " Those who love me know that I did my 
duty, — it is enough." 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 295 

Our whole observation of the daily press convinces us that its 
power to do good arises chiefly from its giving the news of the 
day ; and its power to do harm chiefly from its opportunity to 
comment upon the news. Viewed only as a vehicle of intelli- 
gence, the Herald has taught the journalists of the United States 
the greater part of all that they yet know of their profession ; re- 
garded as an organ of opinion, it has done all that it was ever 
possible for a newspaper to do in perverting public opinion, de- 
bauching public taste, offending public morals, and dishonoring 
the national character. 

The question arises. Why has not this paper been long ago out- 
done in giving the news ? It has always been possible to sup- 
press it by surpassing it. Its errors have given its rivals an im- 
mense advantage over it ; for it has always prospered, not in 
consequence of its badness, but of its goodness. We are ac- 
quainted with two foolish young patriots who were wrought up to 
such a frenzy of disgust by its traitorous course during the first 
half of our late wai', that they seriously considered whether there 
was any way in which they could so well serve their country in 
its time of need, as by slaying that pernicious and insolent editor ; 
but both of those amiable lunatics were compelled occasionally to 
buy the paper. Of late, too, we have seen vast audiences break 
forth into wild hootings at the mention of its name ; but not the 
less did the hooters buy it the next morning. Nevertheless, as 
soon as there exists a paper which to the Herald's good points 
adds the other features of a complete newspaper, and avoids its 
faults, from that hour the Herald wanes and falls speedily to the 
second rank. 

Two men have had it in their power to produce such a news- 
paper, — Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond. In 1841, 
when the Herald was six years old, the Tribune appeared, edited 
by Mr. Greeley, with Mr. Raymond as his chief assistant. Mi'. 
Greeley was then, and is now, the best writer of editorials in the 
United States ; that is, he can produce a greater quantity of tell- 
ing editorial per annum than any other individual. There never 
lived a man capable of working more hours in a year than he. 
Strictly temperate in h^s habits, and absolutely devoted to his 



296 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

work, be threw himself into this enterprise with an ardor never 
surpassed since Adam first tasted the sweets of honorable toil. 
Mr. Raymond, then recently from college, very young, wholly 
inexperienced, was endowed with an admirable aptitude for the 
work of journalism, and a power of getting through its routine 
labors, — a sustained, calm, swift industry, — unsurpassed at that 
time in the American press. The business of the paper was also 
well managed by Mr. McElrath. In the hands of these able men, 
the new paper made such rapid advances, that, in the course of 
a few months, it was fairly established, and in a year or two it 
had reached a circulation equal to that of the Herald. One after 
another, excellent writers were added to its corps ; — the vigor- 
ous, prompt, untiring Dana ; George Ripley, possessing that blend- 
ing of scholarship and tact, that wisdom of the cloister and knowl- 
edge of the world, which alone could fit a man of great learning 
and talent for the work of a daily newspaper ; Margaret Fuller, 
Avhose memory is still green in so many hearts ; Bayard Taylor, 
the versatile, and others, less universally known. 

Why, then, did not this powerful combination supplant the 
Herald ? If mere ability in the writing of a newspaper ; if to 
have given an impulse to thought and enterprise ; if to have won 
the admiration and gratitude of a host of the best men and wom- 
en in America; if to have inspired many thousands of youn"- 
men with better feelings and higher purposes than they would 
else have attained ; if to have shaken the dominion of supersti- 
tion, and made it easier for men to think freely, and freely utter 
their tliought ; if to have produced a newspaper more interesting 
than any other in the world to certain classes in the community ; 
— if all these things had sufficed to give a daily paper the first 
position in the journalism of a country, then the Tribune would 
long ago have attained that position ; for all these things, and 
many more, the Tribune did. But they do not suflSce. Such 
things may be incidental to a great success : they cannot cause it. 
Great journalism — journalism pure and simple — alone can give 
a journal the first place. If Mr. Raymond had been ten years 
older, and had founded and conducted the paper, with Mr. Gree- 
ley as his chief writer of editorials, — that is, if i\\e jovrnalist 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 297 

had been the master of the journal, instead of the writer, the pol- 
itician, and the philanthropist, — the Tribune might have won 
the splendid prize. Mr. Greeley is not a great journalist. He has 
regarded journalism rather as a disagreeable necessity of his vo- 
cation, and uniformly abandoned the care of it to others. An able 
man generally gets what he ardently seeks. Mr. Greeley pro^ 
duced just such a paper as he himself would have liked to take, 
but not such a paper as the public of the island of Manhattan 
prefers. He regards this as his glory. We cannot agree with 
him, because his course of management left the field to the 
Herald, the suppression of which was required by the interests of 
civilization. 

The Tribune has done great and glorious things for us. Not 
free, of course, from the errors which mark all things human, it 
has been, and is, a civilizing power in this land. We hope to have 
the pleasure of reading it every day for the rest of our lives. 
One thing it has failed to do, — to reduce the Herald to insignifi- 
cance by surpassing it in the particulars in which it is excellent. 
We have no right to complain. We only regret that the paper 
representing the civilization of the country should not yet have 
attained the position which would have given it the greatest 
power. 

Mr. Raymond, also, has had it in his power to render this great 
service to the civilization and credit of the United States. The 
Daily Times, started in 1852, retarded for a while by a financial 
error, has made such progress toward the goal of its proprietors' 
ambition, that it is now on the home stretch, only a length or two 
behind. The editor of this paper is a journalist ; he sees clearly 
the point of competition ; he knows the great secret of his trade. 
The prize within his reach is splendid. The position of chief 
journalist gives power enough to satisfy any reasonable ambition 
wealth enough to glut the grossest avarice, and opportunity of 
doing good sufiicient for the most public-spirited citizen. What is 
there in political life equal to it ? We have no right to remark 
upon any man's choice of a career ; but this we may say, — that 
the man who wins the first place in the journalism of a free coun- 
try must concentrate all his powers upon that one work, and, 
13* 



298 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

as an editor, owe no allegiance to party. He must stand above 
all parties, and serve all parties, by spreading before the public 
that full and exact information upon which sound legislation is 
based. 

During the present (1865-6) session of Congress we have had 
daily illustration of this truth. The great question has been, 
What is the condition of the Southern States and the feelino; of 
the Southern people ? All the New York morning papers have 
expended money and labor, each according to its means and en- 
terprise, in getting iiifbrmatiou from the South. This was well. 
But every one of these papers has had some party or personal 
bias, which has given it a powerful interest to make out a case. 
The World and News excluded everything which tended to show 
the South dissatisfied and disloyal. The Tribune, on the other 
hand, diligently sought testimony of that nature. The Times, 
also, being fully committed to a certain theory of reconstruction, 
naturally gave prominence to every fact which supported that 
theory, and was inclined to suppress information of the opposite 
tendency. The consequence was, that an inhabitant of the city 
of New York who simply desired to know the truth was com- 
pelled to keep an eye upon four or five papers, lest something 
material should escape him. This is pitiful. This is utterly be- 
neath the journalism of 1866. The final pre-eminent newspaper 
of America will soar far above such needless limitations as these, 
and present the truth in all its aspects, regardless of its effects 
upon theories, parties, factions, and Presidential campaigns. 

Presidential campaigns, — that is the real secret. The editors 
of most of these papers have selected their candidate for 1868 ; 
and, having done thatj can no more help conducting their journals 
with a view to the success of that candidate, than the needle of a 
compass can help pointing awry when there is a magnet hidden 
in the bimiacle. Here, again, we have no right to censure or 
complain. Yet we cannot help marvelling at the hallucination 
which can induce able men to prefer the brief and illusory honors 
of political station to the substantial and lasting power within the 
grasp of the successful journalist. He, if any one, — he more 
than any one else, — is the master in a free countiy. Have we 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 299 

not seen almost every man who has held or run for the Presiden- 
cy during the last ten or fifteen years paying assiduous and servile 
court, directly or indirectly, or both, to the editor of the Herald ? 
If it were proper to relate to the public what is known on this 
subject to a few individuals, the public would be exceedingly as- 
tonished. And yet this reality of power an editor is ready to 
jeopard for the sake of gratifying his family by exposing them in 
Paris ! Jeopard, do we say ? He has done more : he has thrown 
it away. He has a magnet in his binnacle. He has, for the time, 
sacrificed what it cost him thirty years of labor and audacity to 
"•ain. Strange weakness of human nature ! 

The daily press of the United States has prodigiously improved 
m every respect during the last twenty years. To the best of 
our recollection, the description given of it, twenty-three years 
ago, by Charles Dickens, in his American Notes, was not much 
exaggerated ; although that great author did exaggerate its ef- 
fects upon the morals of the country. His own amusing account 
of the rival editors in Pickwick might have instructed him on 
this latter i^oint. It does not appear that the people of Eatans- 
Avill were seriously injured by the fierce language employed in 
" that false and scurrilous print, the Independent," and in " that 
vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette." Mr. Dickens, 
however, was too little conversant with our poUtics to take the 
atrocious language formerly so common in our newspapers " in a 
Pickwickian sense " ; and we freely confess that in the alarm- 
ing picture which he drew of our press there was only too much 
truth. 

" The foul growth of America," wrote Mr. Dickens, " strikes its fibres 
deep in its licentious press. 

" Schools may be erected, east, west, north, and south ; pupils be 
taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of thousands ; col- 
leges may thrive, churches may be crammed, temperance may be dif- 
fused, and advancing knowledge in all other forms walk through the 
land with giant strides ; but while the newspaper press of America is 
in or near its present abject state, high moral improvement in that 
country is hopeless. Year by year it must and will go back ; year by 
year the tone of public feeling must sink lower down ; year by year 
the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all 



800 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

decent men ; and, year by year, the memory of the great fathers of the 
Revohitlon must be outraged more and more in the bad life of their 
degenerate child. 

" Among the herd of journals which are published in the States, 
there are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of character and 
credit. From personal intercourse with accomplished gentlemen con- 
nected with publications of this class I have derived both pleasure and 
profit. But the name of these is Few, and of the others Legion ; and 
the influence of the good is powerless to counteract the mortal poison 
of the bad. 

" Among the gentry of America, among the well-informed and 
moderate, in the learned professions, at the bar and on the bench, 
there is, as there can be, but one opinion in reference to the vicious 
character of these infamous journals. It is sometimes contended — 
I will not say strangely, for it is natural to seek excuses for such a 
disgrace — that their influence is not so great as a visitor ivould sup- 
pose. I must be pardoned for saying that there is no warrant for this 
plea, and that every fact and circumstance tends directly to the oppo- 
site conclusion. 

" When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or character, 
can climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in America, with- 
out first grovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee before 
this monster of depravity ; when any private excellence is safe from 
its attacks, and when any social confidence is left unbroken by it, or 
any tie of social decency and honor is held in the least regard ; when 
any man in that free country has freedom of opinion, and presumes to 
think for himself, and speak for himself, without humble referenqe to a 
censorship which, for its rampant Ignorance and base dishonesty, he 
utterly loathes and despises in his heart; when those who most acutely 
feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon the nation, and who 
most denounce it to each other, dare to set their heels upon and crush 
it openly, in the sight of all men, — then I will believe that its influ- 
ence Is lessening, and men are returning to their manly senses. But 
while that Press has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in 
every appointment in the state, from a President to a postman, — 
while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the stand- 
ard literature of an enormous class, who must find their reading in a 
newsjiaper, or they will not read at all, — so long must its odium be 
upon the country's head, and so long must the evil it works be plainly 
visible In the Republic. 

" To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, or to 



AND THE NEW YOEK HERALD. 801 

the respectable journals of the Continent of Europe, to those who are 
accustomed to anything else in print and paper, it •would be impossi- 
ble, without an amount of extract for which I have neither space nor 
inclination, to convey an adequate idea of this frightful engine in 
America. But if any man desire confii-mation of my statement on this 
head, let him repair to any place in this city of London where scat- 
tered numbers of these publications are to be found, and there let him 
form his own opinion." 

From a note appended to this passage, we infer that the news- 
paper which weighed upon the author's mind when he wrote it 
was the New York Herald. The direct cause, however, of the 
general license of the press at that time, was not the Herald's 
bad example, but Andrew Jackson's debauching influence. The 
same man who found the government pure, and left it corrupt, 
made the press the organ of his own malignant passions by be- 
stowing high office upon the editors who lied most recklessly 
about his opponents. In 1843 the press had scarcely begun to 
recover from this hateful influence, and was still the merest tool 
of politicians. The Herald, in fact, by demonstrating that a 
newspaper can flourish in the United States without any aid from 
politicians, has brought us nearer the time when no newspaper of 
any importance will be subject to party, which has been the prin- 
cipal cause of the indecencies of the press. 

The future is bright before the journalists of America. The 
close of the war, by increasing their income and reducing their ex- 
penses, has renewed the youth of several of our leading journals, 
and given them a better opportunity than they have ever had be- 
fore. The great error of the publishers of profitable journals 
hitherto has been the wretched compensation paid to writers and 
reporters. To this hour there is but one individual connected 
with the daily press of New York, not a proprietor, who receives 
a salary sufiicient to keep a tolerable house and bring up a family 
respectably and comfortably ; and if any one would find that in- 
dividual, he must look for him, alas ! in the ofiice of the Herald. 
To be plainer : decent average housekeeping in the city of New 
York now costs a hundred dollars a week ; and there is but one 
salary of that amount paid in New York to a journalist who owns 



802 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

no property in his journal. The consequence is, that there is 
scarcely an individual connected with a daily paper who is not 
compelled or tempted to eke out his ridiculous salary by other 
writing, to the injury of his health and the constant deterioration 
of his work. Every morning the public comes fresh and eager 
to the newspaper : fresh and eager minds should alone minister 
to it. No work done on this earth consumes vitality so fast as 
carefully executed composition, and consequently one of the main 
conditions of a man's writing his best is that he should write little 
and rest often. A good writer, moreover, is one of Nature's pe- 
culiar and very rare products. There is a mystery about the 
art of composition. Who shall explain to us why Charles Dick- 
ens can write about a three-legged stool in such a manner that 
the whole civilized world reads witli pleasure ; while another man 
of a hundred times his knowledge and five times his quantity of 
mind cannot write on any subject so as to interest anybody ? 
The laws of supply and demand do not apply to this rarity ; for 
one man's writing cannot be compared with another's, there being 
no medium between valuable and worthless. How many over- 
worked, under-paid men have we known in New York, really 
gifted with this inexplicable knack at writing, who, well com- 
manded and justly compensated, lifted high and dry out of the 
slough of poor-devilism in which their powers were obscured and 
impaired, could almost have made the fortune of a newspaper ! 
Some of these Reporters of Genius are mere children in all the 
arts by which men prosper. A Journalist of Genius would know 
their value, understand their case, take care of their interest, se- 
cure their devotion, restrain their ardor, and turn their talent to 
rich account. We are ashamed to say, that for example of this 
kind of policy we should have to repair to the office named a mo- 
ment since. 

This subject, however, is beginning to be understood, and of 
late there has been some advance in the salaries of members of 
the press. Just as fast as the daily press advances in real inde- 
pendence and efficiency, the compensation of journalists will in- 
crease, until a great reporter will receive a rewai'd in some slight 
degree proportioned to the rarity of the species and to the great- 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 303 

ness of the sei'vices of which he is the medium. By reporters, 
we mean, of course, the entire corps of nevv's-givers, from the 
youth who relates the burning of a stable, to the philosopher who 
chronicles the last vagary of a German metaphysician. These 
laborious men will be appreciated in due time. By them all (he 
great hits of journalism have been made, and the whole future of 
journalism is theirs. 

So diflicult is the reporter's art, that we can call to mind only 
two series of triumphant efforts in this department, — Mr. Rus- 
sell's letters from the Crimea to the London Times, and N. P. 
Willis's " Pencillings by the Way," addressed to the New York 
INIirror. Each of these masters chanced to have a subject per- 
fectly adapted to his taste and talents, and each of them made the 
most of his opportunity. Charles Dickens has produced a few 
exquisite reports. Many ignorant and dull men employed on the 
New York Herald have written good reports because they were 
dull and ignorant. In ftict, there are two kinds of good report- 
ers, — those who know too little, and those who know too much, 
to wander fi'om the point and evolve a report from the depths of 
their own consciousness. The worst possible reporter is one who 
has a little talent, and depends upon that to make up for the 
meagreness of his information. The best reporter is he whose 
sole object is to relate his event exactly as it occurred, and de- 
scribe his scene just as it appeared ; and this kind of excellence 
is attainable by an honest plodder, and by a man of great and 
well-controlled talent. If we were forming a corps of twenty-five 
reporters, we should desire to have five of them men of great and 
higldy trained ability, and the rest indefatigable, unimaginative, 
exact short-hand chroniclers, caring for nothing but to get their 
fact and relate it in the plainest English. 

There is one custom, a relic of the past, still in vogue in the 
offices of daily papers, which is of an absurdity truly exquisite. 
It is the practice of paying by the column, or, in other words, 
paying a premium for verbosity, and imposing a fine upon con- 
ciseness. It will often happen that information which cost three 
days to procure can be well related in a paragraph, and which, if 
related in a paragraph, would be of very great value to the news- 



04 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 



paper printing it. But if the reporter should compress his facts 
into that space, he would receive for his three days' labor about 
what lie expended in omnibus fare. Like a wise man, therefore, 
he spreads them out into three columns, and thus receives a com- 
pensation upon which life can be supported. If matter must be 
paid for by the column, we would respectfully suggest the follow- 
ing rates : For half a column, or less, twenty dollars ; for one 
column, ten dollars ; for two columns, five dollars ; for three 
columns, nothing ; for any amount beyond three columns, no in- 
sertion. 

To conclude with a brief recapitulation : — 

The commodity in which the publishers of daily newspapers 
deal is news, i. e. information respecting recent events in which 
the public take an interest, or in which an interest can be 
excited. 

Newspapers, therefore, rank according to their excellence as 
newspapers ; and no other kind of excellence can make up for 
any deficiency in the one thing for which they exist. 

Consequently, the art of editorshii) consists in forming, hand- 
ling, and inspiring a corps of reporters ; for inevitably that news- 
paper becomes the chief and favorite journal which has the best 
corps of reporters, and uses them best. 

Editorial articles have their importance. They can be a pow- 
erful means of advancing the civilization of a country, and of 
hastening the triumph of good measures and good men ; and upon 
the use an editor makes of his opportunity of addressing the pub- 
lic in this way depends his title to our esteem as a man and fel- 
low-citizen. But, in a mere business point of view, they are of 
infei'ior importance. The best editorials cannot make, nor the 
worst editorials mar, the fortune of a paper. Burke and Macau- 
lay would not add a tenth part as many subscribers to a daily 
paper as the addition to its corps of two well-trained, ably-com- 
manded reporters. 

It is not law which ever renders the press free and independent. 
Nothing is free or independent in this world which is not power- 
ful. Therefore, the editor who would conquer the opportunity 
of speaking his mind freely, must do it by making his paper so 



AND THE NEW YORK HERALD. 305 

excellent as a veliicle of news that the public will buy it though 
it is a daily disgust to them. 

The Herald has thriven beyond all its competitors, because its 
proprietor comprehended these simple but fundamental truths of 
his vocation, and, upon the whole, has surpassed his rivals both 
in the getting and in the display of intelHgence. We must pro- 
nounce him the best journalist and the worst editorialist this con- 
tinent has ever known ; and accordingly his paper is generally 
read and its proprietor universally disapproved. 

And finally, this bad, good paper cannot be reduced to second- 
ary rank except by being outdone in pure journalism. The 
interests of civilization and the honor of the United States re- 
quire that this should be done. There are three papers now ex- 
isting — the Times, the Tribune, and the "World — which ought 
to do it; but if the conductors of neither of these able and spirited 
papers choose to devote themselves absolutely to this task, then 
we trust that soon another competitor may enter the field, con- 
ducted by a joixrnalist proud enough of his profession to be satis- 
fied with its honors. There were days last winter on which it 
seemed as if the whole force of journalism in the city of New 
York was expended in tingeing and perverting intelligence on 
the greatest of all the topics of the time. We have read numbers 
of the World (which has talent and youthful energy enough for 
a splendid career) of which almost the entire contents — corre- 
spondence, telegrams, and editorials — were spoiled for all useful 
purposes by the determination of the whole corps of writers to 
make the news tell in favor of a political party. We can truly 
aver, that journalism, pure and simple, — journalism for its own 
sake, — journalism, the dispassionate and single-eyed servant of 
the whole public, — does not exist in New York during a session 
of Congress. It ought to exist. 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 



THE copy before us, of Mr. Goodyear's work upon " Gum- 
Elastic and its Varieties," presents at least something unique 
in the art of book-making. It is self-illustrating ; inasmuch as, 
treating of India-rubber, it is made of India-rubber. An unob- 
servant reader, however, would scarcely suspect the fact before 
reading the Preface, for the India-rubber covers resemble highly 
polished ebony, and the leaves have the appearance of ancient 
paper worn soft, thin, and dingy by numberless perusals. The 
volume contains six hundred and twenty pages ; but it is not 
as thick as copies of the same work jirinted on paper, though it is 
a little heavier. It is evident that the substance of which this book 
is composed cannot be India-rubber in its natural state. Those 
leaves, thinner than paper, can be stretched only by a strong pull, 
and resume their shape perfectly when they are let go. There is 
no smell of India-rubber about them. We first saw this book iu 
a cold room in January, but the leaves were then as flexible as 
old paper ; and when, since, we have handled it in warm weather, 
they had grown no softer. 

Some of our readers may have heard Daniel Webster relate 
the story of the India-rubber cloak and hat which one of his 
New York friends sent him at Marshfield in the infancy of the 
manufacture. He took the cloak to the piazza one cold morning, 
when it instantly became as rigid as sheet-iron. Finding that it 
stood alone, he placed the hat upon it, and left the articles stand- 
ing near the front door. Several of his neiglibors who passed, 
seeing a dark and portly figure there, took it for the lord of the 
mansion, and gave it respectful salutation. The same articles 
were liable to an objection still more serious. In the sun, even in 



310 CHARLES GOODYEAE. 

cool weather, they became sticky, while on a hot day they would 
melt entirely away to the consistency of molasses. Every one 
remembers the thick and ill-shaped India-rubber shoes of twenty 
years ago, which had to be tliawed out under the stove before 
they could be put on, and which, if left under the stove too long, 
would dissolve into gum that no household art could ever harden 
again. Some decorous gentlemen among us can also remember 
that, in the nocturnal combats of their college days, a flinty India- 
rubber shoe, in cold weather, was a missive weapon of a highly 
effective character. 

This curious volume, therefore, cannot be made of the unman- 
ageable stuff which Daniel Webster set up at his front door. So 
much is evident at a glance. But the book itself tells us that it 
can be subjected, without injury, to tests more severe than sum- 
mer's sun and winter's cold. It can be soaked six months in a 
pail of water, and still be as good a book as ever. It can be 
jboiled ; it can be baked in an oven hot enough to cook a turkey ; 
it can be soaked in brine, lye, campliene, turpentine, or oil ; it can 
be dipped into oil of vitriol, and still no harm done. To crown 
its merits, no rat, mouse, worm, or moth has ever shown the 
slightest inclination to make acquaintance with it. The office of 
a Review is not usually provided with the means of subjecting 
literature to such critical tests as lye, vitriol, boilers, and hot 
ovens. But we have seen enough elsewhere of the ordeals to 
which India-rubber is now subjected to believe Mr. Goodyear's 
statements. Remote posterity will enjoy the fruit of his labors, 
unless some one takes particular pains to destroy this book ; for 
it seems that time itself produces no effect upon the India-rubber 
which bears the familiar stamp, " Goodyear's Patent." In 
the dampest corner of the dampest cellar, no mould gathers upon 
it, no decay penetrates it. In the hottest garret, it never warps 
or cracks. 

The principal object of the work is to relate how this remark- 
able change was effected in the nature of the substance of which 
it treats. It cost more than two millions of dollars to do it. It. 
cost Charles Goodyear eleven most laborious and painful years. 
His book is written without art or skill, but also without guile. 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 311 

H^ was evidently a laborious, conscientions, modest man. neither 
learned nor liighly gifted, but making no pretence to learning or 
gifts, doing tlie work which fell to him with all his might, and 
with a perseverance never surpassed in all the history of inven- 
tion and discovery. Who would have thought to find a romance 
in the history of India-rubber ? We are familiar with the stories 
of poor and friendless men, possessed with an idea and pursuing 
their object, amid obloquy, neglect, and suffering, to the final tri- 
umph ; of which final triumph other men reaped the substantial 
reward, leaving to the discoverer the barren glory of his achieve- 
ment, — and that glory obscured by detraction. Columbus is 
the representative man of that illustrious order. We trust to be 
able to show that Charles Goodyear is entitled to a place in it. 
Whether we consider the prodigious and unforeseen importance 
of his discovery, or his scarcely paralleled devotion to his object, 
in the face of the most disheartening obstacles, Ave feel it to be 
due to his memory, to his descendants, and to the public, that 
his story should be told. Few persons will ever see his book, 
of which only a small number of copies were printed for private 
circulation. Still fewer will be at the pains to pick out the ma- 
terial facts from the confused mass of matter in which they are 
hidden. Happily for our purpose, no one now has an interest 
to call his merits in question. He rests from his labors, and 
the patent, which was the glory and misery of his life, has 
expired. 

Our gi'eat-grandfathers knew India-rubber only as a curiosity, 
and our grandfathers only as a means of erasing pencil-marks. 
The first specimens were brought to Europe in 1730 ; and as late 
as 1770 it was still so scarce an article, that in London it was 
only to be found in one shop, where a piece containing half a 
cubic inch was sold for three shillings. Dr. Priestley, in his 
work on perspective, published in 1770, speaks of it as a new 
article, and recommends its use to draughtsmen. This substance, 
however, being one of those of which nature has provided an in- 
exhaustible supply, greater quantities found their way into the 
commerce of the world ; until, in 1820, it was a drug in all mar- 
kets, and was frequently brought as ballast merely. About this 



312 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

time it began to be subjected to experiments with a view to ren- 
dering it available in the arts. It was found useful as an ingre- 
dient of blacking and varnish. Its elasticity was turned to ac- 
count in France in the manufacture of suspenders and garters, — 
threads of India-rubber being inserted in the web. In England, 
Mackintosh invented his still celebrated water-proof coats, which 
are made of two thin cloths with a paste of India-rubber between 
them. In chemistry, the substance was used to some extent, and 
its singular properties were much considered. In England and 
France, the India-rubber manufacture had attained considerable 
importance before the material had attracted the attention of 
American experimenters. The Europeans succeeded in render- 
ing it useful because they did not attempt too much. The French 
cut the imported sheets of gum into shreds, without ever attempt- 
ing to produce the sheets themselves. Mackintosh exposed no 
surface of India-rubber to the air, and brought no surfaces of In- 
dia-rubber into contact. No one had discovered any process by 
v/hich India-rubber once dissolved could be restored to its original 
consistency. Some of our readers may have attemf^ted, twenty 
years ago, to fill up the holes in the sole of an India-rubber shoe. 
Nothing was easier than to melt a piece of India-rubber for the 
pux'pose ; but, when applied to the shoe, it would not harden. 
There was the grand difficulty, the complete removal of which 
cost so much money and so many years. 

The ruinous failure of the first American manufacturers arose 
from the fact that they began their costly operations in ignorance 
of the existence of this difliculty. They were too fast. They 
proceeded in the manner of the inventor of the caloric engine, 
who began by placing one in a ship of great magnitude, involving 
an expenditure which ruined the owners. 

It was in the year 1820 that a pair of India-rubber shoes was 
seen for the first time in the United States. They were covered 
with gilding, and resembled in shape the shoes of a Chinaman. 
They were handed about in Boston only as a curiosity. Two or 
three years after, a ship from South America brought to Boston 
five hundred pairs of shoes, thick, heavy, and ill-shaped, which 
sold so readily as to invite further importations. The business 



CHARLES GOODYEAE. 313 

increased until the annual importation readied half a million 
pairs, and India-rubber shoes had become an article of general 
use. Tlie manner in which these shoes were made by the natives 
of South America was frequently described in the newspapers, 
and seemed to present no difficulty. They were made much as 
farmei's' wives made candles. The sap being collected from the 
trees, clay lasts were dipped into the liquid twenty or thirty 
times, each layer being smoked a little. The shoes were then 
hung up to harden for a few days ; after which the clay was re- 
moved, and the shoes were stored for some months to harden 
them still more. Nothing was more natural than to suppose that 
Yankees could do this as well as Indians, if not far better. The 
raw India-rubber could then be bought in Boston for five cents a 
pound, and a pair of shoes made of it brought from three to five 
dollars. Surely here was a promising basis for a new branch of 
manufacture in New England. It happened too, in 1830, that 
vast quantities of the raw gum reached the United States. It 
came covered with hides, in masses, of which no use could be 
made in America ; and it remained unsold, or was sent to Eu- 
rope. 

Patent-leather suggested the first American attempt to turn 
India-rubber to account. Mr. E. M. Chaffee, foreman of a Bos- 
ton patent-leather factory conceived the idea, in 1830, of spread- 
ing India-rubber upon cloth, hoping to produce an article which 
should possess the good qualities of patent-leather, with the ad- 
ditional one of being water-proof. In the deepest secrecy he 
experimented for several months. By dissolving a pound of In- 
dia rubber in three quarts of spirits of turpentine, and adding 
lampblack enough to give it the desired color, he produced a com- 
position which he supposed would perfectly answer the purpose. 
He invented a machine for spreading it, and made some speci- 
mens of cloth, which had every appearance of being a very use- 
ful article. The surface, after being dried in the sun, was firm 
and smooth ; and Mr. Chaffee supposed, and his friends agreed 
with him, that he had made an invention of the utmost value. 
At this point he invited a few of the solid men of Roxbury to 
look at his specimens and listen to his statements. He convinced 
14 



314 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

them. The result of the conference was the Roxburj India-rub- 
ber Company, incorporated in February, 1833, with a capital of 
thirty thousand dollars. 

The progress of this Company was amazing. Within a year 
its capital was increased to two hundred and forty thousand dollars. 
Before another year had expired, this was increased to three hun- 
dred thousand ; and in the year following, to four hundred thousand. 
The Company manufactured the cloth invented by Mr. Chaffee, 
and many articles made of that cloth, such as coats, caps, wagon- 
curtains and coverings. Shoes, made without fibre, were soon in- 
troduced. Nothing could be better than the appearance of these 
articles when they were new. They were in the highest favor, 
and were sold more rapidly than the Company could manufacture 
them. The astonishing prosperity of the Roxbury Company had 
its natural effect in calling into existence similar establishments in 
other towns. Manufactories were started at Boston, Framing- 
ham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy, and Staten Island, with capi- 
tals raiimnfj from one hundred thousand dollai's to half a million ; 
and all of them appeared to prosper. There was an India-rub- 
ber mania in those years similar to that of petroleum in 1864. 
Not to invest in India-rubber stock was regarded by some shrewd 
men as indicative of infei'ior business talents and general dulness 
of comprehension. The exterior facts were certainly well calcu- 
lated to lure even the most wary. Here was a material worth 
only a few cents a pound, out of Avhich shoes were quickly made, 
which brought two dollars a pair ! It was a plain ca?e. Besides, 
there were the India-rubber Companies, all working to their ex- 
treme capacity, and selling all they could make. 

It was when the business had reached this flourishing stage 
that Charles Goodyear, a bankrupt hai'dware m.erchant of Phila- 
delphia, first had his attention directed to the material upon which 
it was founded. In 1834, being in New York on business, he 
chanced to observe the sign of the Roxbury Company, which then 
had a depot in that city. He had been reading in, the news- 
papers, not long before, descriptions of the new life-preservers 
made of India-rubber, an application of the gum that was much 
extolled. Curiosity induced him to enter the store to examine 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 315 

the life-preservers. He bought one and took it home with him. 
A native of Connecticut, he possessed in full measure the Yankee 
propensity to look at a new contrivance, first with a view to un- 
derstand its principle, and next to see if it cannot be improved. 
Already he had had some experience both of the dilficulty of in- 
troducing an improved implement, and of the profit to be derived 
from its introduction. His father, the head of the firm of A. 
Goodyear and Sons, of which he was a member, was the first to 
manufacture hay-forks of spring steel, instead of the Iieavy, 
wrouglit-iion forks made by the village blacksmith; and Charles 
Goodyear could remember the time when his father reckoned it 
a happy day on which he had persuaded a fai-mer to accept a few 
of the new forks as a gilt, on the condition of giving them a trial. 
But it was also very fresh in his recollection that those same 
foi'ks had made their way to almost universal use, had yielded 
large profits to his firm, and were still a leading article of its trade, 
when, in 1830, the failure of Southern liouses had compelled it to 
suspend. He was aware, too, that, if anything could extricate 
the house of A. Goodyear and Sons from embarrassment, it vi'as 
their possession of superior methods of manufacturing and their 
sale of articles improved by their own ingenuity. 

Upon examining his life-preserver, an improvement in the in- 
flating apparatus occurred to him. When he was next in New 
York he explained his improvement to the agent of the Eoxbury 
Company, and offered to sell it. The agent, struck with the in- 
genuity displayed in the new contrivance, took the inventor into 
his confidence, partly by way of explaining why the Company 
could not then buy tlie improved tube, but principally with a view 
to enlist tlie aid of an ingenious mind in overcoming a difficulty 
that threatened the Company with ruin. He told him that the 
prosperity of the India-rubber Com])anies in the United States 
was wholly fallacious. The Roxbury Company had manufac- 
tured vast quantities of shoes and fabrics in the cool months of 
1833 and 1834, which had been readily sold at high prices; but 
during the following summer, the greater part of them had 
melted. Twenty thousand dollai's' worth had been returned, re- 
duced to the consistency of common gum, and emitting an odor 



316 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

80 offensive that they had been obliged to bury it. New ingredi- 
ents had been employed, new machinery applied, but still the ar- 
ticles would dissolve. In some cases, shoes had borne the heat of 
one summer, and melted the next. The wagon-covers became 
sticky in the sun, and rigid in the cold. The directors were at 
their wits' end ; — since it required two years to test a new pro- 
cess, and meanwhile they knew not whether the articles made by 
it were valuable or worthless. If they stopped manufacturing, 
that was certain ruin. If they went on, they might find the prod- 
uct of a whole winter dissolving on their hands. The capital of 
the Company was already so far exhausted, that, unless the true 
method were speedily discovered, it would be compelled to wind 
up its affairs. The agent urged Mr. Goodyear not to waste time 
upon minor improvements, but to direct all his efforts to finding 
out the secret of successfully working the material itself. The 
Company could not buy his improved inflator ; but let liim learn 
how to make an India-rubber that would stand the summer's heat, 
and there was scarcely any price which it would not gladly give 
for the secret. 

The worst apprehensions of the directors of this Company 
were realized. The public soon became tired of buying India- 
rubber shoes that could only be saved during the summer by 
putting them into a refrigerator. In the third year of the ma- 
nia, India-rubber stock began to decline, and Roxbury itself 
finally fell to two dollars and a half. Before the close of 183G, 
all the Companies had ceased to exist, their fall involving many 
hundreds of families in heavy loss. The clumsy, shapeless shoes 
from South America were the only ones which the people would 
buy. It was generally supposed that the secret of their resisting 
heat was that they were smoked with the leaves of a certain tree, 
peculiar to South America, and that nothing else in nature would 
answer the purpose. 

The two millions of dollars lost by these Companies had one 
result which has proved to be worth many times that sum ; it led 
Charles Goodyear to undertake the investigation of India-rubber. 
That chance conversation with the agent of the Roxbury Com- 
pany fixed his destiny. If he were alive to read these lines, he 



CHABLES GOODYEAR. 317 

would, however, protest against the use of such a word as chance 
in this connection. He really appears to have felt himself "called" 
to study India-rubber. He says himself: — 

" From the time that his attention was first given to the subject, a 
strong and abiding impression was made upon his nnnd, that an object 
so desirable and important, and so necessary to man's comfort, as the 
making of gum-elastic available to his use, was most certainly placed 
within his reach. Having this presentiment, of which he could not di- 
vest himself under the most trying adversity, he was stimulated with 
the hope of ultimately attaining this object. 

" Beyond this he would refer the whole to the great Creator, who 
directs the operations of mind to the development of the properties of 
matter, in his own way, at the time when they are specially needed, 

influencing some mind for every work or calling Were he to 

refrain from expressing his views thus briefly, he would ever feel that 
he had done violence to his sentiments." 

This is modestly said, but his friends assure us that he felt it 
earnestly and habitually. It was, indeed, this steadfast conviction 
of the possibility of attaining his object, and his religious devotion 
to it, that constituted his capital in his new business. He had 
little knowledge of chemistry, and an aversion to complicated cal- 
culations. He was a ruined man ; for, after a long struggle with 
misfortune, the firm of A. Goodyear and Sons had surrendered 
their all to their creditors, and still owed thirty thousand dollars. 
He had a family, and his health was not robust. Upon returning 
home after conversing with the agent of the Roxbury Company, 
be was arrested for debt, and compelled to reside within the prison 
limits. He melted his first pound of India-rubber while he was 
living within those limits, and struggling to keep out of the jail 
itself. Thus he began his experiments in circumstances as little 
favorable as can be imagined. There were only two things in 
his favor. One was his conviction that India-rubber could be 
subjugated, and that he was the man destined to subjugate it. 
The other was, that. India-rubber having fallen to its old price, 
he could continue his labors as lonsr as he could raise five cents 
and procure access to a fire. The very odium in which business- 
men held India-rubber, though it long retarded his final triumph, 
placed an abundance of the native gum within the means even of 



818 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

an inmate of the debtor's prison, in whicli he often was during 
the whole period of his experimenting. He was seldom out of 
jail a whole year from 1835 to 1841, and never out of danger of 
arrest. 

In a small house in Philadelphia, in the winter of 1834-35, 
he be"-an his investigations. He melted his gum by the domestic 
fire, kneaded it with his own hands, spread it upon a marble slab, 
and rolled it with a rolling-pin. A prospect of success flattered 
him from the first and lured him on. He was soon able to pro- 
duce sheets of India-rubber which appeared as firm as those im- 
ported, and which tempted a friend to advance him a sum of 
money sufficient to enable him to manufacture several hundred 
pairs of shoes. He succeeded in embossing his shoes in vari- 
ous patterns, which gave them a novel and elegant appearance. 
Mindful, however, of the disjLsters of the Roxbury Company, he 
had the prudence to store his shoes until the summer. The hot 
days of June reduced them all to soft and stinking paste. His 
friend was discouraged, and refused him further aid. For his 
own part, such experiences as this, though they dashed his spirits 
for a while, stimulated him to new efforts. 

It now occurred to him, that i!)erhaps it was the turpentine 
used in dissolving the gum, or the lampblack employed to color 
it, that spoiled his product. He esteemed it a rare piece of luck 
to procure some barrels of the sap not smoked, and still liquid. 
On going to the shed where the precious sap was deposited, he 
was accosted by an Irishman in his employ, who, in high glee, 
informed him that he had discovered the secret, pointing to. his 
overalls, which he had dipped into the sap, and which were nicely 
coated with firm India-rubber. For a moment he thought that 
Jeny might have blundered into the secret. The man, however, 
sat down on a barrel near the fire, and, on attempting to rise, 
found himself glued to his seat and his legs stuck together. He 
had to be cut out of hi§ overalls. The master proceeded to ex- 
periment with the sap, but soon discovered that the handsome 
white cloth made of it bore the heat no better than that which 
was produced in the usual manner. 

It is remarkable, that inventors seldom derive direct aid from 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 319 

the science of their day. James Watt modestly ascribes to 
Professor Black part of the glory of his improvements in the 
steam-engine ; but it seems plain from his own narrative, that 
he made his great invention of the condenser without any assist- 
ance. Professor Black assisted to instruct and form him ; but 
the flash of genius, which made the steam-engine what we now 
see it, was wholly his own. The science of Glasgow was dili- 
gently questioned by him upon the defects of the old engine, but 
it gave him no hint of the remedy. It was James Watt, mathe- 
matical-instrument maker, earning fourteen shillings a week, who 
brooded over his little model until the conception of the condenser 
burst upon him, as he was taking his Sunday afternoon stroll on 
Glasgow Green. Goodyear had a similar experience. Phila- 
delphia has always been noted for its chemists and its chemical 
works, and that city still supplies the greater part of the country 
with manufactured drugs and chemists' materials. Nevertheless, 
though Goodyear explained his difficulties to professors, physi- 
cians, and chemists, none of them could give him valuable infor- 
mation ; none suggested an experiment that produced a useful 
result. We know not, indeed, whether science has ever explained 
his final success. 

Satisfied that nothing could be done with India-rubber pure 
and simple, he concluded that a compound of some substance 
with India-rubber could alone render the gum available. He 
was correct in this conjecture, but it remained to be discovered 
whether there was such a substance in nature. He tried every- 
thing he could think of. For a short time he was elated with 
the result of his experiments with magnesia, mixing half a pound 
of magnesia with a pound of gum. This compound had the 
advantage of being whiter than the pure sap. It was so firm 
that he used it as leather in the binding of a book. In a few 
weeks, however, he had the mortification of seeing his elegant 
white book-covers fermenting and softening. Afterwards, they 
grew as hard and brittle as shell, and so they remain to this day. 

By this time, the patience of his friends and his own little fund 
of money were both exhausted ; and, one by one, the relics of 
bis former prosperity, even to his wife's trinkets, found their way 



320 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

to the pawnbroker. He was a sanguine man, as inventors need 
to be, always feeling that he was ou the point of succeeding. 
The very confidence with which he announced a new conception 
served at length to close all ears to his solicitations. In the second 
year of his investigation he removed his family to the country, 
and went to New York, in quest of some one who had still a 
little faith in India-rubber. His credit was then at so low an ebb 
that he was obliged to deposit with the landlord a quantity of 
linen, spun by his excellent wife. It was never redeemed. It 
was sold at auction to pay the first quarter's rent ; and his furni- 
ture also would liave been seized, but that he had taken the pre- 
caution to sell it himself in Philadelphia, and had placed in his 
cottage articles of too little value to tempt the hardest creditor. 

In New York, — the first resort of the enterprising and the 
last refuge of the unfortunate,- — he found two old friends; one 
of whom lent him a room in Gold Street for a laboratory, and 
the other, a druggist, supplied him with materials on credit. 
Again his hopes were flattered by an apparent success. By boil- 
ing his compound of gum and magnesia in quicklime and water, 
an article was produced which seemed to be all that he could 
desire. Some sheets of India-rubber made by this process drew 
a medal at the fiiir of the American Institute in 1835, and were 
much commended in the newspapers. Nothing could exceed the 
smoothness and firmness of the surface of these sheets ; nor have 
they to this day been surpassed in these particulars. He obtained 
a patent for the process, manufactured a considerable quantity, 
sold his product readily, and thought his difficulties were at an 
end. In a few weeks his hopes were dashed to the ground. He 
found that a drop of weak acid, such as apple-juice or vinegar 
and water, instantly annihilated the effect of the lime, and made 
the beautiful surface of his cloth sticky. 

Undaunted, he next tried the experiment of mixing quicklime 
with pure gum. He tells us that, at this time, he used to prepare 
a gallon jug of quicklime at his room in Gold Street, and carry it 
on his shoulder to Greenwich Village, distant three miles, where 
he had access to horse-power for working his compound. This ex- 
periment, too, was a failure. The lime in a short time appeared 



CHAKLES GOODYEAE. 321 

to consume the gum with which it was mixed, leaving a substance 
that crumbled to pieces. 

Accident suggested his next process, which, though he knew it 
not, was a step toward his final success. Except his almost un- 
paralleled perseverance, the most marked trait in the character of 
this singular man was his love for beautiful forms and colors. An 
incongruous garment or decoration upon a member of his family, 
or anything tawdry or ill-arranged in a room, gave him positive 
distress. Accordingly, we always find him endeavoring to deco- 
rate his India-rubber fabrics. It was in bronzing the surface of 
some India-rubber drapery that the accident happened to which 
we have referred. Desiring to remove the bronze from a piece 
of the drapery, he applied aquafortis for the purpose, which did 
indeed have the effect desired, but it also discolored the fabi-ic 
and appeared to spoil it. He threw away the piece as useless. 
Several days after, it occiuTed to him that he had not sufficiently 
examined the effect of the aquafortis, and, hurrying to his room, 
he was fortunate enough to find it again. A remarkable change 
appeared to have been made in the India-rubber. He does not 
seem to have been aware that aquafortis is two fifths sulphuric acid. 
Still less did he ever suspect that the surface of his drapery had 
really been " vulcanized." All he knew was, that India-rubber 
cloth " cured," as he termed it, by aquafortis, was incomparably 
superior to any previously made, and bore a degree of heat that 
rendered it available for many valuable purposes. 

He was again a happy man. ., A partner, with ample capital, 
joined him. He went to Washington and patented his process. 
He showed his specimens to President Jackson, who expressed in 
writing his approval of them. Returning to New York, he pre- 
pared to manufacture on a gi-eat scale, hired the abandoned India- 
rubber w'orks on vStaten Island, and engaged a store in Broadway 
for the sale of his fabrics. In the midst of these grand prepara- 
tions, his zeal in experimenting almost cost him his life. Having 
generated a large quantity of poisonous gas in his close room, he 
was so nearly suffocated that it was six weeks before he recov- 
ered his health. Before he had begun to produce his fabrics in 
any considerable quantity, the commercial storm of 1836 swept 
14* u 



322 ' CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

away the entire property of his partner, which put a complete 
stop to the operations in India-rubber, and reduced poor Good- 
year to his normal condition of beggary. Beggary it literally 
was ; for he was absolutely dependent upon others for the means 
of sustaining life. He mentions that, soon after this crushing 
blow, his family having previously joined him in New York, he 
awoke one morning to discover that he had neither an atom of 
food for them, nor a cent to buy it with. Putting in his pocket 
an article that he supposed a pawnbroker would value, he set out 
in the hope of procuring enough money to sustain them for one 
day. Before reaching the sign, so familiar to him, of the three 
Golden Balls, he met a terrible being to a man in his situation, — 
a creditor ! Hungry and dejected, he prepared his mind for a 
torrent of bitter reproaches ; for this gentleman was one whose 
patience he felt he had abused. "What was his relief when his 
creditor accosted him gayly with, " Well, Mr. Goodyear, what 
can I do for you to-day ? " His first thought was, that an insult 
was intended, so preposterous did it seem that this man could 
really desire to aid him further. Satisfied that the offer was well 
meant, he told his friend that he had come out that morning in 
search of food for his family, and that a loan of fifteen dollars 
would greatly oblige him. The money was instantly produced, 
which enabled him to postpone his visit to the pawnbroker for 
several days. The pawnbroker was still, however, his frequent 
resource all that year, until the few remains of his late brief pros- 
perity had all disappeared. 

But he never for a moment let go his hold upon India-rubber. 
A timely loan of a hundred dollars from an old friend enabled 
him to remove his family to Staten Island, near the abandoned 
India-rubber factory. Having free access to the works, he and 
his wife contrived to manufacture a few articles of his improved 
cloth, and to sell enough to provide daily bread. His great ob- 
ject there was to induce the directors of the suspended Company 
to recommence operations upon his new process. But so com- 
pletely sickened were they of the very name of a material which 
had involved them in so much loss and discredit, that during the 
six months of his residence on the Island he never succeeded in 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 323 

persuading one man to do so much as come to the factory and 
look at his specimens. There were thousands of dollars' worth 
of machinery there, but not a single shareholder cared even to 
know the condition of the property. This was the more remark- 
able, since he w^as unusually endowed by nature with the power 
to inspire other men with his own confidence. The magnates of 
Staten Island, however, involved as they w^ere in the general 
shipwreck of property and credit, were inexorably deaf to his 
eloquence. 

As he had formerly exhausted Philadelphia, so now New 
York seemed exhausted. He became even an object of ridi- 
cule. He was regarded as an India-rubber monomaniac. One 
of his New York friends having been asked how Mr. Goodyear 
could be recognized in the street, replied : " If you see a man 
with an India-rubber coat on, India-rubber shoes, an India- 
rubber cap, and in his pocket an India-rubber purse, with not a 
cent in it, that is he." He was in the habit then of wearing his 
material in every form, with the twofold view of testing and ad- 
vertising it. 

In September, 1836, aided again by a small loan, he packed a 
few of his best specimens in his carpet-bag, and set out alone for 
the cradle of the India-rubber manufacture, — Roxbury. Th-; 
ruin of the great Company there was then complete, and the 
factory was abandoned. All that part of Massachusetts was 
suffering from the total depreciation of the India-rubber stocks. 
There were still, however, two or three persons who could not 
quite give up India-rubber. Mr. Chaffee, the originator of the 
manufacture in America, welcomed warmly a brother experi- 
menter, admired his specimens, encouraged him to persevere, 
procured him friends, and, what was more important, gave him 
the use of the enormous machinery standing idle in the factory. 
A brief, delusive prosperity again relieved the monotony of 
misfortune. By his new process, he made shoes, piano-covers, 
and carriage-cloths, so superior to any previously produced in the 
United States as to cause a temporary revival of the business, 
which enabled him to sell risfhts to manufacture under his 
patents. His profits in a single year amounted to four or five 



324 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

thousand dollars. Again he had his family around him, and felt a 
boundless confidence in the future. 

An event upon which he had depended for the completeness 
of his triumph plunged him again into ruin. He received an 
order from the government for a hundred and fifty India-rubber 
mail-bags. Having perfect confidence in his ability to execute 
this order, he gave the greatest possible publicity to it. All the 
world should now see that Goodyear's India-rubber was all that 
Goodyear had represented it. The bags were finished ; and 
beautiful bags they were, — smooth, firm, highly jjolished, well- 
shaped, and indubitably water-proof. He had them hung up all 
round the factory, and invited every one to come and inspect 
them. They were universally admired, and the maker was 
congratulated upon his success. It was in the summer that 
these fatal bags were finished. Having occasion to be absent 
for a month, he left them hanging in the factory. Judge of his 
consternation when, on his return, he found them softening, 
fermenting, and dropping off their handles. The aquafortis did 
indeed " cure " the surface of his India-rubber, but only the sur- 
face. Very thin cloth made by this process was a useful and 
somewhat durable article ; but for any other purpose, it was 
valueless. The public and signal failure of the mail-bags, 
together with the imperfection of all his products except his 
thinnest cloth, suddenly and totally destroyed his rising busi- 
ness. Everything he possessed that was salable was sold at 
auction to pay his debts. He was again penniless and destitute, 
with an increased family and an aged father dependent upon 
him. 

His friends, his brothers, and his wife now joined in dissuad- 
ing him from further experiments. Were not four years of 
such vicissitude enoua;h ? Who had ever touched India-rubber 
without loss? Could he hope to succeed, when so many able 
and enterprising men had failed ? Had he a right to keep his 
family in a condition so humiliating and painful ? He had 
succeeded in the hardware business; why not return to it? 
There were those who would join him in any rational under- 
taking; but how could he expect that any one would be will- 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 325 

ing to throw more money into a bottomless pit that had already 
ingulfed millions without result? These arguments he could 
not answer, and we cannot ; the friends of all the great inventors 
have had occasion to use the same. It seemed highly absurd to 
the friends of Fitch, Watt, Fulton, Wedgwood, Whitney, Ark- 
wright, that they should forsake the beaten track of business to 
pursue a path that led through the wilderness to nothing but 
wilderness. Not one of these men, perhaps, could have made a 
reasonable reply to the remonstrances of their friends. They 
only felt, as poor Goodyear felt, that the steep and thorny path 
Avhich they were treading was the path they must pursue. A 
power of which they could give no satisfactory account urged 
them on. And when we look closely into the lives of such men, 
we observe that, in their dark days, some trifling circumstance 
was always occurring that set them upon new inquiries and gave 
them new hopes. It might be an ignis fatims that led them 
farther astray, or it might be genuine light which brought them 
into the true path. 

Goodyear might have yielded to his friends on this occasion, for 
he was an aifectionate man, devoted to his family, had not one of 
those trifling events occurred which inflamed his curiosity anew. 
During his late transient prosperity, he had employed a man, Na- 
thaniel Hayward by name, who had been foreman of one of the 
extinct India-rubber companies. He found him in charge of the 
abandoned factory, and still making a few articles on his own ac- 
count by a new process. To harden his India-rubber, he put a 
very small quantity of sulphur into it, or sprinkled sulphur upon 
the surface and dried it in the sun, Mr. Goodyear was surprised 
to observe that this process seemed to produce the same effect as 
the application of aquafortis. It does not appear to have occurred 
to him that Hayward's process and his own were essentially the 
same. A chemical dictionary would have informed him that sul- 
phuric acid enters largely into the composition of aquafortis, from 
which he might have inferred that the only difference between 
the two methods was, that Hayward employed the sun, and Good- 
year nitric acid, to give the sulphur effect. Hayward's goods, 
however, were liable to a serious objection ; the smell of the sul- 



326 CHARLES GOOD-i-EAR. 

phar, in warm weather, was intolerable. Hayvvard, it appears, 
was a very illiterate man ; and the only account he could give of 
his invention was, that it was revealed to him in a dream. His 
process was of so little use to him, that Goodyear bought his pat- 
ent for a small sum, and gave him employment at monthly wages 
until the mail-bag disaster deprived him of the means of doing so. 
In combining sulphur with India-rubber, Goodyear had ap- 
proached so near his final success that one step more brought him 
to it. He was certain that he was very close to the secret. He 
saw that sulphur had a mysterious power over India-rubber when 
a union could be effected between tlie two substances. True, 
there was an infinitesimal quantity of sulphnr in his mail-bags, 
and they had melted in the shade ; but the surface of his cloth, 
jjowdered with the sulphur and dried in the sun, bore the sun's 
heat. Here was a mystery. The problem was, how to produce 
in a 7nass of India-rubber the change effected on the surface 
by sulphur and sun ? He made numberless experiments. He 
mixed with the gum large quantities of sulphur, and small quanti- 
ties. He exposed his compound to the sun, and held it near a 
fire. He felt that he had the secret in his hands ; but for many 
weary months it eluded him. 

■ And, after all, it was an accident that revealed it ; but an acci- 
dent that no man in the world but Charles Goodyear could have 
interpreted, nor he, but for his five years' previous investigation. 
At Woburn one day, in the spring of 1839, he was standing with 
his brother and several other persons near a very hot stove. He 
held in his hand a mass of his compound of sulphur and gum, 
upon which he was expatiating in his usual vehement manner, — 
the company exhibiting the indifference to which he was accus- 
tomed. In the crisis of his argument he made a violent gesture, 
which brought the mass in contact with the stove, which was hot 
enough to melt India-rubber instantly ; upon looking at it a 
moment after, he perceived that his compound had not melted in 
the least degree ! It had charred as leather chars, but no part of 
the surface had dissolved. There was not a sticky place upon it. 
To say that he was astonished at this would but faintly express his 
ecstasy of amazement. The result was absolutely new to all ex- 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 327 

perience, — ludia-rubber not melting in contact with red-hot 
iron ! A man must have beqa five years absorbed in the pursuit 
of an object to comprehend his emotions. He felt as Columbus 
felt vi'hen he saw the land-bird alighting upon his ship, and the 
drift-wood floating by. But, like Columbus, he was surrounded 
with an unbelieving crew. Eagerly he showed his charred India- 
rubber to his brother, and to the other bystanders, and dwelt 
upon the novelty and marvellousness of his fact. They regarded 
it with complete indifference. The good man had worn them all 
out. Fifty times before, he had run to them, exulting in some 
new discovery, and they supposed, of course, that this was another 
of his chimeras. 

He followed the new clew with an enthusiasm which his 
friends would have been justified in calling frenzy, if success had 
not finally vindicated him. He soon discovered that his com- 
pound would not melt at any degree of heat. It next occurred 
to him to ascertain at how low a temperature it would char, and 
whether it was not possible to arrest the combustion at a point 
that would leave the India-rubber elastic, but deprived of its 
adhesiveness. A single experiment proved that this was possible. 
After toasting a piece of his compound before an open fire, he 
found that, while part of it was charred, a rim of India-rubber 
round the charred portion was elastic still, and even more elastic 
than pure gum. In a few days he had established three facts ; — 
first, that this rim of India-rubber would bear a temperature of 
two hundred and seventy-eight degrees without charring ; second, 
that it would not melt or soften at any heat ; third, that, placed 
between blocks of ice and left out of doors all night, it would not 
stiffen in the least degree. He had triumphed, and he knew it. 
He tells us that he now " felt himself amply repaid for the past, 
and quite indifferent as to the trials of the future." It was well 
he was so, for his darkest days were before him, and he was still 
six years from a practicable success. He had, indeed, proved that 
a compound of sulphur and India-rubber, in proper proportions 
and in certain conditions, being subjected for a certain time to a 
certain degree of heat, undergoes a change which renders it per- 
fectly available for all the uses to which he had before attempted 



Q 



28 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 



in vain to apply it. Bnt it remained to be ascertained what were 
those proper proportions, what were those conditions, what was 
that degi-ee of heat, what was that certain time, and by what 
means the heat could be best applied. 

The difficulty of all this may be inferred when we state that 
at the present time it takes an intelligent man a year to learn 
how to conduct the process with certainty, though he is provided, 
from the start, with the best implements and appliances which 
twenty years' experience has suggested. And poor Goodyear 
had now reduced himself, not merely to poverty, but to isolation. 
No friend of his could conceal his impatience when he heard 
him pronounce the word India-rubber. Business-men recoiled 
from the name of it. He tells us that two entire years passed, 
after he had made his discovery, before he had convinced one 
human being of its value. Now, too, his experiments could no 
longer be carried on with a few pounds of India-rubber, a quart 
of turpentine, a phial of aquafortis, and a little lampblack. He 
wanted the means of producing a high, uniform, and controllable 
degree of heat, — a matter of much greater difficulty than he 
anticipated. We catch brief glimpses of him at this time in the 
volumes of testimony. "We see him waiting for his wife to draw 
the loaves from her oven, that he might put into it a batch of 
India-rubber to bake, and watching it all the evening, far into the 
night, to see what effect was produced by one hour's, two hours', 
three hours', six hours' baking. We see him boiling it in his 
wife's saucepans, suspending it before the nose of her teakettle, 
and hanging it from the handle of that vessel to within an inch 
of the boiling water. We see him roasting it in the ashes and 
in hot sand, toasting it before a slow fire and before a quick fire, 
cooking it for one hour and for twenty-four hours, changing the 
proportions of his compound and mixing them in different ways. 
No success rewarded him while he employed only domestic uten- 
sils. Occasionally, it is true, he produced a small piece of per- 
fectly vulcanized India-rubber ;. but upon subjecting other pieces 
to precisely the same process, they would blister or char. 

Then we see him resorting to the shops and factories in the 
neighborhood of Woburn, asking the privilege of using an oven 



CHAELES GOODYEAR. 329 

after working hours, or of hanging a piece of India-rubber in the 
" man-hole " of the boiler. The foremen testify that he was a 
great plague to them, and smeared their works with his sticky 
compound ; but, though they all regarded him as little better 
than a troublesome lunatic, they all appear to have helped him 
very willingly. He frankly confesses that he lived at this time 
on charity ; for, although he felt confident of being able to repay 
the small sums which pity for his family enabled him to borrow, 
his neighbors who lent him the money were as far as possible 
from expecting payment. Pretending to lend, they meant to 
give. One would pay his butcher's bill or his milk bill ; another 
would send in a barrel of flour ; another would take in payment 
some articles of the old stock of India-rubber ; and some of the 
farmers allowed his children to gather sticks in their fields to 
heat his hillocks of sand containing masses of sulphurized India- 
rubber. If the people of New England were not the most 
" neighborly " people in the world, his family must have starved, 
or he must have given up his experiments. But, with all the 
generosity of his neighbors, his children were often sick, hungry, 
and cold, without medicine, food, or fuel. One witness testifies : 
" I found (in 1839) that they had not fuel to burn nor food to 
eat, and did not know where to get a morsel of food from one 
day to another, unless it was sent in to them." We can neither 
justify nor condemn their father. Imagine Columbus within 
sight of the new world, and his obstinate crew declaring it was 
only a mirage, and refusing to row him ashore ! Never was 
mortal man surer that he had a fortune in his hand, than Charles 
Goodyear was when he would take a piece of scorched and dingy 
India-rubber from his pocket and expound its marvellous proper- 
ties to a group of incredulous villagers. Sure also was he that 
he was just upon the point of a practicable success. Give him but 
an oven, and would he not turn you out fire-proof and cold-proof 
India-rubber, as fast as a baker can produce loaves of bread ? 
Nor was it merely the hope of deliverance from his pecuniary 
straits that urged him on. In all the records of his career, we 
perceive traces of something nobler than this. His health being 
always infirm, he was haunted with the dread of dying before he 



Q 



30 OHAKLES GOODYEAE. 



had reached a point in his discoveries where other men, Influ- 
enced by ordinary motives, could render them available. 

By the time that he had exhausted the patience of the foremen 
of the works near Woburn, he had come to the conclusion that 
an oven was the proper means of applying heat to his compound. 
An oven he forthwith determined to build. Having obtained the 
use of a corner of a factory yard, his aged father, two of his 
brothers, his little son, and himself sallied forth, with pickaxe 
and shovels, to begin the work : and when they had done all that 
unskilled labor could effect towards it, he induced a mason to 
complete it, and paid him in bricklayers' aprons made of aqua- 
fortized India-rubber. This first oven was a tantalizing failure. 
The heat was neither uniform nor controllable. Some of the 
pieces of India-rubber would come out so perfectly " cured " as 
to demonstrate the utility of his discovery ; but others, prepared 
in precisely the same manner, as far as he could discern, were 
spoiled, either by blistering or charring. He was puzzled and 
distressed beyond description ; and no single voice consoled or 
encouraged him. Out of the first piece of cloth which he suc- 
ceeded in vulcanizing he had a coat made for himself, which was 
not an ornamental garment in its best estate ; but, to prove to 
the unbelievers that it would stand fire, he brought it so often in 
contact with hot stoves, that at last it presented an exceedingly 
dingy appearance. His coat did not impress the public favorably, 
and it served to confinn the opinion that he was laboring under 
a mania. 

In the midst of his first disheartening expei'iments with sul- 
phur, he had an opportunity of escaping at once from his troubles. 
A house in Paris made him an advantageous offer for the use of 
his aquafortis process. From the abyss of his misery the honest 
man promptly replied, that that process, valuable as it was, was 
about to be superseded by a new method, which he was then 
perfecting, and as soon as he had developed it sufficiently he 
should be glad to close with their offers. Can we wonder that 
his neighbors thought him mad ? 

It was just after declining the French proposal that he endured 
his worst extremity of want and humiliation. It was in the win- 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 331 

ter of 1839 - 40. One of those long and ten-ible snow-storms for 
which New England is noted had been raging for many hours, 
and he awoke one morning to find his little cottage half buried in 
snow, the storm still continuing, and in his house not an atom of 
fuel nor a morsel of food. His children were very young, and 
he was himself sick and feeble. The charity of his neighbors 
was exhausted, and he had not the courage to face their re- 
proaches. As he looked out of the window upon the dreary and 
tumultuous scene, " fit emblem of his condition," he remarks, he 
called to mind that, a few days before, an acquaintance, a mere 
acquaintance, who lived some miles off, had given him upon the 
road a more friendly greeting than he was then accustomed to 
receive. It had cheered his heart as he trudged sadly by, and it 
now returned vividly to his mind. To this gentleman he deter- 
mined to apply for relief, if he could reach his house. Terrible 
was his struggle with the wind and the deep drifts. Often he 
•was ready to faint with fatigue, sickness, and hunger, and he 
would be obliged to sit down upon a bank of snow to rest. He 
reached the house and told his story, not omitting the oft-told tale 
of his new discovery, — that mine of v/ealth, if only he could 
procure the means of working it ! The eager eloquence of the 
inventor was seconded by the gaunt and yellow face of the man. 
His generous acquaintance entertained him cordially, and lent 
him a sum of mone}^, which not only carried his family through 
the worst of the winter, but enabled him to continue his experi- 
ments on a small scale. 0. B. Coolidge, of Woburn, was the 
name of this benefactor. 

On another occasion, when he was in the most urgent need of 
materials, he looked about his house to see if there was left one 
relic of better days upon which a little money could be borrowed. 
There was nothing except his children's school-books, — the last 
things from which a New-Englander is willing to part. There 
was no other resource. He gathered them up and sold them for 
five dollars, with which he laid in a fresh stock of gum and sul- 
phur, and kept on experimenting. 

Seeing no prospect of success in Massachusetts, he now resolved 
to make a desperate effort to get to New York, feeling confident 



332 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

that the specimens he could take with him would convince some 
one of the superiority of his new method. He was beginning to 
understand the causes of his many failures, but he saw clearly 
that his compound could not be worked with certainty without 
expensive apparatus. It was a very delicate operation, requiring 
exactness and promptitude. The conditions upon which success 
depended were numerous, and the failure of one spoiled all. To 
vulcanize India-rubber is about as difficult as to make perfect 
bread ; but the art of bread-making was the growth of ages, and 
Charles Goodyear was only ten years and a half in perfecting 
his process. Thousands of ingenious men and women, aided by 
many happy accidents, must have contributed to the successive 
invention of bread ; but he was only one man, poor and sick. It 
cost him thousands of failures to learn that a little acid in his 
sulphur caused the blistering ; that his compound must be heated 
almost immediately after being mixed, or it would never vulcan- 
ize ; that a portion of white lead in the compound greatly facili- 
tated the operation and improved the result ; and when he had 
learned these facts, it still required costly and laborious experi- 
ments to devise the best methods of compounding his ingredients, 
the best proportions, the best mode of heating, the proper dura- 
tion of the heating, and the various useful effects that could be 
produced by varying the proportions and the degree of heat. He 
tells us that many times^ when, by exhausting every resource, he 
had prepared a quantity of his compound for heating, it was 
spoiled because he could not, with his inadequate apparatus, ap- 
ply the heat soon enough. 

To New York, then, he directed his thoughts. Merely to get 
there cost him a severer and a longer effijrt than men in general 
are capable of making. First he walked to Boston, ten miles 
distant, where he hoped to be able to borrow from an old ac- 
quaintance fifty dollars, with which to provide for his family and 
pay his fare to New York. He not only failed in this, but he 
was arrested for debt and thrown into prison. Even in prison, 
while his father was negotiating to secure his release, he labored 
to interest men of capital in his discovery, and made proposals for 
founding a factory in Boston. Having obtained his liberty, he 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 333 

went to a hotel, and spent a week in vain efforts to effect a small 
loan. Saturday night came, and with it his hotel bill, which he 
had no means of discharging. In an agony of shame and anxie- 
ty, he went to a friend, and entreated the sum of five dollars to 
enable him to return home. He was met with a point-blank re- 
fusal. In the deepest dejection, he walked the streets till late in 
the night, and strayed at length, almost beside himself, to Cam- 
bridge, where he ventured to call upon a friend and ask shelter 
for the night. He was hospitably entertained, and the next morn- 
ing walked wearily home, penniless and despairing. At the door 
of his house a member of his family met him with the news that 
his youngest child, two years of age, whom he had left in perfect 
health, was dying. In a few hours he had in his house a dead 
child, but not the means of burying it, and five .living dependants 
without a morsel of food to give them. A storekeeper near by 
had promised to supply the family, but, discouraged by the un- 
foreseen length of the father's absence, he had that day refused 
to trust them further. In these terrible circumstances, he ap- 
plied to a friend upon whose generosity he knew he could rely, 
one who had never failed him. He received in reply a letter of 
severe and cutting reproach, enclosing seven doUai-s, which his 
friend explained was given only out of pity for his innocent and 
suffering family. A stranger, who chanced to be present when 
this letter arrived, sent them a barrel of flour, — a timely and 
blessed relief. The next day the family followed on foot the re- 
mains of the little child to the grave. 

A relation in a distant part of the country, to whom Goodyear 
revealed his condition, sent him fifty dollars, which enabled him 
to get to New York. He had touched bottom. The worst of 
his trials were over. In New York, he had the good fortune to 
make the acquaintance of two brothers, William Rider and Emory 
Rider, men of some property and great intelligence, who exam- 
ined his specimens, listened to his story, believed in him, and 
agreed to aid him to continue his experiments, and to supply his 
family until he had rendered his discovery available. From that 
time, though he was generally embarrassed in his circumstances, 
his family never wanted bread, and he was never obliged to sus- 



334 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

pend his experiments. Aided by the capital, the sympathy, and 
the ingenuity of the brothers Rider, he spent a year in New York 
in the most patient endeavors to overcome the difficulties in 
heating his compound. Before he had succeeded, their resources 
failed. But he had made such progress in demonstrating the 
practicability of his process, that his brother-in-law, William De 
Forrest, a noted woollen manufacturer, took hold of the project 
in earnest, and aided him to bring it to perfection. Once more, 
however, he was imprisoned for debt. This event conquered his 
scruples against availing himself of the benefit of the bankrupt 
act, which finally delivered him from the danger of arrest. We 
should add, however, that, as soon as he began to derive income 
from his invention, he rea?sumed his obligations to his old credit- 
ors, and discharged them gradually. 

It was not till the year 1844, more than ten years after he 
began to experiment, and more than five years after discovering 
the secret of vulcanization, that he was able to conduct his pro- 
cess with absolute certainty, and to produce vulcanized India- 
rubber with the requisite expedition and economy. We can form 
some conception of the ditficulties overcome by the fact, that the 
advances of Mr. De Forrest in aid of the experiment reached 
the sum of forty-six thousand dollars, — an amount the inventor 
did not live long enough to repay. 

His triumph had been long deferred, and we have seen in part 
how much it had cost him. But his success proved to be richly 
worth its cost. He had added to the arts, not a new material 
merely, but a new class of materials, applicable to a thousand 
diverse uses. His product had more than the elasticity of India- 
rubber, while it was divested of all those properties which had 
lessened its utility. It was still India-rubber, but its surfaces 
would not adhere, nor would it harden at any degree of cold, nor 
soften at any degree of heat. It was a cloth impervious to water. 
It was paper that would not tear. It was parchment that would 
not crease. It was leather which neither rain nor sun would in- 
jure. It was ebony that could be run into a mould. It was ivory 
that could be worked like wax. It was wood that never cracked, 
shrunk, nor decayed. " It was metal, " elastic metal," as Daniel 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 335 

Webster termed it, that could be wound round the finger or tied 
into a knot, and which preserved its elasticity almost like steel. 
Trifling variations in the ingredients, in the proportions, and in 
the heating, made it either as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, 
as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as tlint. 

All this is stated in a moment, but each of these variations in 
the material, as well as every article made from them, cost this 
indefatigable man days, weeks, months, or years of experiment. 
It cost him, for example, several years of most expensive trial to 
obviate the objection to India-rubber fabrics caused by the liabil- 
ity of the gum to peel from the cloth. He tried every known 
textile fabric, and every conceivable process before arriving at 
the simple expedient of mixing fibre with the gum, by which, 
at lengthj the perfect India-rubber cloth was produced. This in- 
vention he considered only second in value to the discovery of 
vulcanization. The India-rubber shoe, as we now have it, is an 
admirable article, — light, strong, elegant in shape, with a fibrous 
sole that does not readily wear, cut, or slip. As the shoe is made 
and joined before vulcanization, a girl can make twenty-five pairs 
in a day. They are cut from the soft sheets of gum and joined 
by a slight pressure of the hand. But almost every step of this 
process, now so simple and easy, was patiently elaborated by 
Charles Goodyear. A million and a half of pairs per annum is 
now the average number made in the United States by his pro- 
cess, though the business languishes somewhat from the high 
price of the raw materials. The gum, which, when Goodyear 
began his experiments, was a drug at five cents a pound, has 
recently been sold at one dollar and twenty cents a pound, with 
all its impurities. Even at this high price the annual import 
ranges at from four to five millions of pounds. 

Poor Richard informs us that Necessity never makes a good 
bargain. Mr. Goodyear was always a prey to necessity. Nor 
was he ever a good man of business. He was too entirely an 
inventor to know how to dispose of his inventions to advantage ; 
and he could never feel that he had accomplished his mission 
with regard to India-rubber. As soon as he had brought his 
shoemaking process to the point where other men could make it 



336 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

profitable, he withdrew from manufacturing, and sold rights to 
manufacture for the consideration of half a cent per pair. Five 
cents had been reasonable enough, and would have given him 
ample means to continue his labors. Half a cent kept him sub- 
ject to necessity, which seemed to compel him to dispose 
of other rights at rates equally low. Thus it happened 
that, when the whole India-rubber business of the country paid 
him tribute, or ought to have paid it, he remained an embarrassed 
man. He had, too, the usual fate of inventors, in having to con- 
tend with the infringers of his rights, — men who owed their all 
to his ingenuity and perseverance. We may judge, however, of 
the rapidity with which the business grew, by the fact that, six 
years after the completion of his vulcanizing process, the holders 
of lights to manufacture shoes by that process deemed it worth 
while to employ Daniel AVebster to plead their cause, and to 
stimulate his mind by a fee of twenty-five thousand dollars. It is 
questionable if Charles Goodyear ever derived that amount from 
his patents, if we deduct from his receipts the money spent in 
further developing his discoveiy. His ill-health obliged him to 
be abstemious, and he had no expensive tastes. It was only in 
his laboratory that he was lavish, and there he was lavish indeed. 
His friends still smiled at his zeal, or reproached him for it. 
It has been only since the mighty growth of the business in his 
pro'ducts that they have acknowledged that he was right and that 
they were wrong. They remember him, sick, meagre, and yel- 
low, now coming to them with a walking-stick of India-rubber, 
exulting in the new application of his material, and predicting its 
general use, while they objected that his stick had cost him fifty 
dollars ; now running about among the comb factories, trying to 
get reluctant men to try their tools upon hard India-rubber, and 
producing at length a set of combs that cost twenty times the 
price of ivory ones ; now shutting himself up for months, endeav- 
oring to make a sail of India-rubber fabric, impervious to water, 
that should never freeze, and to which no sleet or ice shoUld ever 
cling ; now exhibiting a set of cutlery with India-rubber handles, 
or a picture set in an India-rubber frame, or a book with India- 
rubber covers, or a watch with au India-rubber case ; now exper- 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 337 

imenting with India-rubber tiles for floors, wliicli he hoped to 
make as brilliant in color as those of mineral, as agreeable to the 
tread as carpet, and as durable as an ancient floor of oak. There 
is nothing in the history of invention more remarkable than the 
. devotion of this man to his object. No crusader was ever so 
devoted to his vow, no lover to his mistress, as he was to his 
purpose of showing mankind what to do with India-rubber. The 
doorplate of his oflice was made of it ; his portrait was painted 
upon and framed with it ; his book, as we have seen, was wholly 
composed of it ; and his mind, by night and day, was surcharged 
with it. lie never went to sleep without having within reach 
writing materials and the means of making a light, so that, if he 
should have an idea in the night, he might be able to secure it. 
Some of his best ideas, he used to say, were saved to mankind 
by this precaution. 

It is not well for any man to be thus absorbed in his object. 
To Goodyear, whose infirm constitution peculiarly needed repose 
and recreation, it was disastrous, and at length fatal. It is well 
with no man who does not play as well as work. Fortunately, 
we are all beginning to understand this. We are beginnins: to 
see that a devotion to the business of life which leaves no reserve 
of force and time for social pleasures and the pursuit of knowl- 
edge, diminishes even our power to conduct business with the 
sustained and intelligent energy requisite for a safe success. That 
is a melancholy passage in one of Theodore Parker's letters, 
written in the premature decline of his powers, in which he la- 
ments that he had not, like Franklin, joined a club, and taken an 
occasional ramble with young companions in the country, and 
played billiards with them in the evening. He added, that he in- 
tended to lead a better hfe in these particulars for the future ; but 
who can reform at forty-seven ? And the worst of it is, that ill- 
health, the natural ally of all evil, favors intensity, lessening 
both our power and our inclination to get out of the routine that 
is destroying us. Goodyear, always sick, had been for so many 
years the slave of his pursuit, he had been so spurred on by ne- 
cessity, and lured by partial success, that, when at last he might 
have rested, he could not. 

15 T 



338 CHAELES GOODYEAR. 

It does not become us, however, who reap the harvest, to cen- 
sure him who wore himself out in sowing the seed. The harvest 
• is great, — greater than any but he anticipated. His friends 
know now that he never over-estimated the value of his invention. 
They know now what he meant when he said that no one but 
himself would take the trouble to apply his material to the thou- 
sand uses of which it was capable, because each new application 
demanded a course of experiments that would discourage any one 
who entered upon it only with a view to profit. The India-rub- 
ber manufacture, since his death, has increased greatly in extent, 
but not much in other respects, and some of the ideas which he 
valued most remain undeveloped. He died, for example, in the 
conviction that sails of India-rubber cloth would finally supersede 
all others. He spent six months and five thousand dollars in pro- 
ducing one or two specimens, which were tried and answered their 
purpose well ; but he was unable to bring his sail-making process 
to an available perfection. The sole difficulty was to make his 
sails as light as those of cloth. He felt certain of being able to 
accomplish this ; but in the multiplicity of his objects and the 
pressure of his embarrassments, he was compelled to defer the 
completion of his plans to a day that never came. 

The catalogue of his successful efforts is long and striking. 
The second volume of his book is wholly occupied with that cat- 
alogue. He lived to see his material applied to nearly five hun- 
dred uses, to give employment in England, France, Germany, 
and the United States to sixty thousand persons, who annually 
produced merchandise of the value of eight millions of dollars. 
A man does much who only founds a new kind of industry ; and 
he does more when that industry gives value to a commodity that 
before was nearly valueless. But we should greatly undervalue 
the labors of Charles Goodyear, if we regarded them only as 
opening a new source of wealth ; for there have been found many 
uses of India-rubber, as prepared by him, which have an impor- 
tance far superior to their commercial value. Art, science, and 
humanity are indebted to him for a material which serves the 
purposes of them all, and serves them as no other known mate- 
rial could. 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 339 

Some of our readers have been out on the picket-line during 
the war. They know what it is to stand motionless in a wet and 
miry rifle-pit, in the chilling rain of a Southern winter's night. 
Protected by India-rubber boots, blanket, and cap, the picket- 
man performs in comparative comfort a duty which, without that 
protection, would make him a cowering and shivering wretch, and 
plant in iiis bones a latent rheumatism to be the torment of his 
old age. Goodyear's India-rubber enables him to come in from 
his pit as dry as he was when he went into it, and he comes in to 
lie down with an India-rubber blanket between him and the damp 
, earth. If he is wounded, it is an India-rubber stretcher, or an 
ambulance provided with India-rubber springs, that gives him 
least pain on his way to the hospital, where, if his wound is seri- 
ous, a water-bed of India-rubber gives ease to his mangled frame, 
and enables him to endure the wearing tedium of an unchanged 
posture. Bandages and supporters of India-rubber avail him much 
when first he begins to hobble about his ward. A piece of India- 
rubber at the end of his crutch lessens the jar and the noise of 
his motions, and a cushion of India-rubber is comfortable to his 
armpit. The springs which close the hospital door, the bands 
which exclude the drafts from doors and windows, his pocket- 
comb and cup and thimble, are of the same material. From jars 
hermetically closed with India-rubber he receives the fresh fruit, 
that is so exquisitely delicious to a fevered mouth. The instru- 
ment-case of his surgeon and the store-room of his matron con- 
tain many articles whose utility is increased by the use of it, and. 
some that could be made of nothing; else. His shirts and sheets 
pass through an India-rubber clothes-wringer, which saves the 
strength of the washerwoman knd the fibre of the fabric. When 
the government presents him with an artificial leg, a thick heel and 
elastic sole of India-rubber give him comfort every time he puts 
it to the ground. An India-rubber pipe with an inserted bowl 
of clay, a billiard-table provided with India-rubber cushions and 
balls, can solace his long convalescence. 

In the field, this material is not less strikingly useful. During 
thi.s war, armies have marched through ten days of rain, and slept 
through as many rainy nights, and come out dry into the return- 



840 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

ing sunshine, with its artillery untarnished and its ammunition un- 
injured, because men and munitions were all under India-rubber. 
When Goodyear's ideas are carried out, it will be by pontoons of 
inflated India-rubber that rivers will be crossed. A pontoon-train 
will then consist of one wagon drawn by two mules ; and if the 
march is through a country that furnishes the wooden part of the 
bridge, a man may carry a pontoon on his back in addition to his 
knapsack and blanket. 

In the naval service we meet this material in a form that at- 
tracts little attention, though it serves a purpose of perhaps un- 
equalled utility. Mechanics are aware, that, from the time of 
James Watt to the year 1850, the grand desideratum of the en- 
gine-builder was a pei'fect joint, — a joint that would not admit 
the escape of steam. A steam-engine is all over joints and valves, 
from most of which some steam sooner or later would escape, 
since an engine in motion produces a continual jar that finally 
impaired the best joint that art could make. The old joint-mak- 
ing process was exceedingly expensive. The two surfaces of 
iron had to be most carefully ground and polished, then screwed 
together, and the edges closed with white lead. By the use of a 
thin sheet of vulcanized India-rubber, placed between the iron 
surfaces, not only is all this expense saved, but a joint is produced 
that is absolutely and permanently perfect. It is not even neces- 
sary to rub off the roughness of the casting, for the rougher the 
surface, the better the joint. Goodyeai''s invention supplies an 
article that Watt and Fulton sought in vain, and which Avould 
seem to put the finishing touch to the steam-engine, — if, in these 
days of improvement, anything whatever could be considered 
finished. At present, all engines are provided with these joints 
and valves, which save steam, diminish jar, and facilitate the 
separation of the parts. It is difficult to compute the value of 
this improvement, in money. We are informed, however, by 
competent authority, that a steamer of two thousand tons saves 
ten thousand dollars a year by its use. Such is the demand for 
the engine-packing, as it is termed, that the owners of the factory 
where it is chiefly made, after constructing the largest water- 
wheel in the world, found it insufficient for their growing business, 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 341 

and were obliged to add to it a steam-engine of two hundred 
horse-power. The New York agent of this company sells about 
a million dollars' worth of packing per annum. 

Belting for engines is another article for which Goodyear's 
compound is superior to any other, inasmuch as the surface of 
the India-rubber clings to the iron wheel better than leather or 
fabric. Leather polishes and slips ; India-rubber does not polish, 
and holds to the iron so firmly as to save a large percentage of 
power. It is no small advantage merely to save leather for other 
uses, since leather is an article of which the supply is strictly 
limited. It is not uncommon for India-rubber belts to be fur- 
nished, which, if made of leather, would require more than a 
hundred hides. Emeiy-wheels of this material have been recent- 
ly introduced. They were formerly made of wood coated with 
emery, which soon wore off. In the new manufacture, the emery 
is kneaded into the entire mass of the wheel, which can be worn 
down till it is all consumed. On the same principle the instru- 
ments used to sharpen scythes are also made. Of late we hear 
excellent accounts of India-rubber as a basis for artificial teeth. 
It is said to be lighter, more agreeable, less expensive, than gold 
or platina, and not less durable. We have seen also some very 
pretty watch-cases of this material, elegantly inlaid with gold. 

It thus appears, that the result of Mr. Goodyear's long and 
painful struggles was the production of a material which now 
ranks with the leading compounds of commerce and manufacture, 
such as glass, brass, steel, paper, porcelain, paint. Considering 
its peculiar and varied utility, it is perhaps inferior in value only 
to paper, steel, and glass. We see, also, that the use of the new 
compound lessens the consumption of several commodities, such 
as ivory, bone, ebony, and leather, which it is desirable to save, 
because the demand for them tends to increase faster than the 
supply. When a set of ivory billiard-balls costs fifty dollars, and 
civilization presses upon the domain of the elephant, it is well to 
make our combs and our paper-knives of something else. 

That inventions so valuable should be disputed and pirated 
was something which the history of all the great inventions might 
have taught ]\Ir. Goodyear to expect. We need not revive those 



342 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

disputes which embittered his life and wasted his substance and 
his time. The Honorable Joseph Holt, the Commissioner who 
granted an extension to the vulcanizing patent in 1858, has suffi- 
ciently characterized them in one of the most eloquent papers 
ever issued from the Patent Office : — 

" No inventor probably has ever been'so harassed, so trampled upon, 
so plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in 
the parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as ' pirates.' 
The spoliations of their incessant guerilla warfare upon his defenceless 
rights have unquestionably amounted to millions. In the very front 
rank of this predatory band stands one who sustains in this case the 
double and most convenient character of contestant and witness ; and 
it is but a subdued expression of my estimate of the deposition he has 
lodged, to say that this Parthian shaft — the last that he could hurl at 
an invention which he has so long and so remorselessly pursued — is a 
fitting finale to that career which the public justice of the country has 
so signally rebuked." 

Mr. Holt paid a noble tribute to the class of men of whose 
rights he was the official guai'dian : — 

"All that is glorious in our past or hopeful in our future is indissolu- 
bly hnked with that cause of human progress of which inventors are 
the preux chevaliers. It is no poetic translation of the abiding senti- 
ment of the country to say, that they are the true jewels of the nation 
to which they belong, and that a solicitude for the protection of their 
rights and interests should find a place in every throb of the national 
heart. Sadly helpless as a class, and offering, in the glittering creations 
of their own genius, the strongest temptations to unscrupulous cupidity, 
they, of all men, have most need of the shelter of the public law, while, 
in view of their philanthropic labors, they are of all men most entitled 
to claim it. The schemes of the politician and of the statesman may 
subserve the purposes of the hour, and the teachings of the moralist 
may remain with the generation to which they are addressed, but all 
this must pass away; while the fruits of the inventor's genius will 
endure as imperishable memorials, and, surviving the wreck of creeds 
and systems, alike of politics, religion, and philosophy, will diffuse 
their blessings to all lands and throughout all ages." 

When Mr. Goodyear had seen the manufacture of shoes and 
fabrics well established in the United States, and when his rights 
appeared to have been placed beyond controversy by the Trenton 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 343 

decision of 1852, being stijl oppressed with debt, he went to 
Europe to introduce his material to the notice of capitalists there. 
The great manufactories of vulcanized India-rubber in England, 
Scotland, France, and Germany are the result of his labors ; but 
the peculiarities of the patent laws of those countries, or else his 
own want of skill in contending for his rights, prevented him 
from reaping the reward of his labors. He spent six laborious 
years abroad. At the Great Exhibitions of London and Paris, 
he made brilliant displays of his wares, which did honor to his 
country and himself, and gave an impetus to the prosperity of the 
men who have grown rich upon his discoveries. At the London 
Exhibition, he had a suite of three apartments, carpeted, furnished, 
and decorated only with India-rubber. At Paris, he made a 
lavish display of India-rubber jewelry, dressing-cases, work-box- 
es, picture-frames, which attracted great attention. His reward 
was, a four days' sojourn in the debtors' prison, and the cross of 
the Legion of Honor. The delinquency of his American li- 
censees procured him the former, and the favor of the Emperor 
the latter. 

We have seen that his introduction to India-rubber was 
through the medium of a life-preserver. His last labors, also, 
were consecrated to life-saving apparatus, of which he invented 
or suggested a great variety. His excellent wife was reading 
to him one evening, in London, an article from a review, in 
which it was stated that twenty persons perished by drowning 
every hour. The company, startled at a statement so unex- 
pected, conversed upon it for some time, while Mr. Goodyear 
himself remained silent and thoughtful. For several niffhts he 
was restless, as was usually the case with him when he was med- 
itating a new application of his material. As these periods of 
incubation were usually followed by a prostrating sickness, his 
wife urged him to forbear, and endeavor to compose his mind 
to sleep. " Sleep ! " said he, " how can I sleep while twenty 
human beings are drowning every hour, and I am the man who 
can save them ? " It was lonsr his endeavor to invent some ar- 
tide which every man, woman, and child would necessarily 
wear, and which would make it impossible for them to sink. 



344 • CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

Pie experimented with bats, cravats, jackets, and petticoats ; 
and, though he left his principal object incomplete, be contrived 
many of those means of saving life which now puzzle the oc- 
cupants of state-rooms. He had the idea that every article on 
board a vessel seizable in the moment of danger, every chair, 
table, sofa, and stool, should be a life-preserver. 

He returned to his native land a melancholy spectacle to his 
friends, — yellow, emaciated, and feeble, — but still devoted to 
his work. He lingered and labored until July, 1860, when he 
died in New York, in the sixtieth year of his age. Almost to 
the last day of his life he was busy with new applications of his 
discovery. After twenty-seven years of labor and investigation, 
after having founded a new branch of industry, which gave em- 
ployment to sixty thousand persons, he died insolvent, leaving 
to a wife and six children only an inheritance of debt. Those 
who censure him for this should consider that his discovery was 
not profitable to himself for more than ten years, that he was 
deeply in debt when he began his experiments, that his investi- 
gations could be carried on only by increasing his indebtedness, 
that all his bargains were those of a man in need, that the guile- 
lessness of his nature made him the easy prey of greedy, dishon- 
orable men, and that his neglect of his private intex-ests was due, 
in part, to his zeal for the public good. 

Dr. Button of New Haven, his pastor and friend, in the Ser- 
mon dedicated to his memory, did not exaggerate when he spoke 
of him as 

" one who recognized his peculiar endowment of inventive genius as 
a divine gift, involving a special and defined responsibility, and consid- 
ered himself called of God, as was Bezaleel, to that particular course 
of invention to which he devoted the chief part of his life. This he 
often expressed, though with his characteristic modesty, to his friends, 
especially his religious friends His Inventive work was his re- 
ligion, and was pervaded and animated by religious faith and devotion. 
He felt like an apostle commissioned for that work ; and he said to his 
niece and her husband, who went, with his approbation and sympathy, 
as missionaries of the Gospel to Asia, that he was God's missionary as 
truly as they were." 

Nothing more true. The demand for the raw gum, almost 



CHARLES GOODYEAR. 345 

created by him, is introducing abundance and developing in- 
dustry in the regions which produce it. As the culture of cot- 
ton seems the predestined means of improving Africa, so the 
gathering of caoutchouc may procure for the inhabitants of the 
equatorial regions of both continents such of the blessings of 
civilization as they are capable of appropriating. 

An attempt was made last winter to procure an act of Con- 
gress extending the vulcanizing patent for a further period of 
seven years, for the benefit of the creditors and the family of the 
inventor. The petition seemed reasonable. The very low tariff 
paid by the manufacturers could have no perceptible effect upon 
the price of articles, and the extension would provide a compe- 
tence for a worthy family who had claims upon the gratitude of 
the nation, if not upon its justice. The manufacturers generally 
favored the extension, since the patent protected them, in the 
deranged condition of our currency, from the competition of the 
foreign manufacturer, who pays low wages and enjoys a sound 
currency. The extension of the patent would have harmed no 
one, and would have been an advantage to the general interests 
of the trade. The son of the inventor, too, in whose name the 
petition was offered, had spent his whole life in assisting his 
father, and had a fair claim upon the consideration of Congress. 
But the same unscrupulous and remorseless men who had plun- 
dered poor Goodyear living, hastened to Washington to oppose 
the petition of his family. A cry of " monopoly " was raised in 
the newspapers to which they had access. The presence in 
Washington of Mrs. Goodyear, one of the most retiring of women, 
and of her son, a singularly modest young man, who were aided 
by one friend and one professional agent, was denounced as " a 
powerful lobby, male and female," who, having despoiled the 
public of " twenty millions," were boring Congress for a grant of 
twenty millions more, — all to be wrung from an India-rubber- 
consuming public. The short session of Congress is unfavorable 
to private bills, even when they are unopposed. These arts 
sufficed to prevent the introduction of the bill desired, and the 
patent has since expired. 

The immense increase in the demand for the gum has fre- 
15* 



846 CHARLES GOODYEAR. 

quently suggested the inquiry whether there is any danger of 
the supply becoming unequal to it. There are now in Europe 
and America more than a hundred and fifty manufactories of 
India-rubber articles, employing from five to five hundred opera- 
tives each, and consuming more than ten millions of pounds of gum 
per annum. The business, too, is considered to be still in its infan- 
cy. Certainly, it is increasing. Nevertheless, there is no possibility 
of the demand exceeding the supply. The belt of land round the 
globe, five hundred miles north and five hundred miles south of 
the equator, abounds in the trees producing the gum, and they can 
be tapped, it is said, for twenty successive seasons. Forty-three 
thousand of these trees were counted in a tract of country thirty 
miles long and eight wide. Each tree yields an average of three 
table-spoonfuls of sap daily, but the trees are so close together 
that one man can gather the sap of eighty in^a day. Starting at 
daylight, with his tomahawk and a ball of clay, he goes from tree 
to tree, making five or six incisions in each, and placing under 
each incision a cup made of the clay which he carries. In three 
or four hours he has completed his circuit and comes home to 
breakfast. In the afternoon he slings a large gourd upon his 
shoulder, and repeats his round to collect the sap. The cups are 
covered up at the roots of the tree, to be used again on the fol- 
lowing day. In other regions the sap is allowed to exude from 
the tree, and is gathered from about the roots. But, however it 
is collected, the supply is superabundant; and the countries which 
produce it are those in which the laborer needs only a little tapi- 
oca, a little coffee, a hut, and an apron. In South America, from 
which our supply chiefly comes, the natives subsist at an expense 
of three cents a day. The present high price of the gum in the 
United States is principally due to the fact that greenbacks are 
not current in the tropics ; but in part, to the rapidity with which 
the demand has increased. Several important applications of the 
vulcanized gum have been deferred to the time when the raw 
material shall have fallen to what Adam Smith would style its 
" natural price." 

Charles Goodyear's work, therefore, is a permanent addition 
to the resources of man. The latest posterity will be indebted to 
him. 



.HENRY WARD BEECHER 



.AND HIS CHURCH. 



HENRY WARD BEECHER AND HIS 
CHURCH. 

IS there anything in America more peculiar to America, or 
more curious in itself, than one of our " fashionable " Protes- 
tant churches, — such as we see in New York, on the Fifth Ave- 
nue and in the adjacent streets ? The lion and the lamb in the 
Millennium will not lie down together more lovingly than the 
Church and the World have blended in these singular establish- 
ments. We are far from objecting to the coalition, but note it only 
as something curious, new, and interesting. 

We enter an edifice, upon the interior of which the upholsterer 
and the cabinet-maker have exhausted the resources of their 
trades. The word " subdued " describes the effect at which those 
artists have aimed. The woods employed are costly and rich, but 
usually of a sombre hue, and, though elaborately carved, are fx'e- 
quently unpolished. The light which comes through the stained 
windows, or through the small diamond panes, is of that descrip- 
tion which is eminently the " dim, religious." Every part of the 
floor is thickly carpeted. The pews differ little from sofas, except 
in being more comfortable, and the cushions for the feet or the 
knees are as soft as hair and cloth can make them. It is a fash- 
ion, at present, to put the organ out of sight, and to have a clock 
so unobtrusive as not to be observed. Galleries are now viewed 
with an unfriendly eye by the projectors of churches, and they 
are going out of use. Everything in the way of conspicuous 
lighting apparatus, such as the gorgeous and dazzling chandeliers 
of fifteen years ago, and the translucent globes of later date, is 
discarded, and an attempt is sometimes made to hide the vulgar 
fact that the church is ever open in the evening. In a word 
the design of the fashionable church-builder of the present mo- 



850 HENRY WARD BEECHER 

ment is to produce a richly furnished, quietly adorned, dimly il- 
luminated, ecclesiastical parlor, in which a few hundred ladies 
and gentlemen, attired in kindred taste, may sit perfectly at their 
ease, and see no object not in harmony with the scene around 
them. 

To say that the object of these costly and elegant arrange- 
ments is to repel poor people would be a calumny. On the con- 
trary, persons who show by their dress and air that they exercise 
the less remunerative vocations are as politely shown to seats as 
those who roll up to the door in carriages, and the presence of 
such persons is desired, and, in many instances, systematically 
sought. Nevertheless, the poor are repelled. They know they 
cannot pay their proportion of the expense of maintaining such 
establishments, and they do not wish to enjoy what others pay 
for. Everything in and around the church seems to proclaim it 
a kind of exclusive ecclesiastical club, designed for the accommo- 
dation of persons of ten thousand dollars a year, and upward. 
Or it is as though the carriages on the Road to Heaven were di- 
vided into first-class, second-class, and third-class, and a man 
either takes the one that accords with his means, or denies him- 
self the advantage of travelling that road, or prefers to trudge 
long on foot, an independent wayfarer. 

It is Sunday morning, and the doors of this beautiful drawing- 
room are thrown open. Ladies dressed with subdued magnifi- 
cence glide in, along with some who have not been able to leave 
at home the showier articles of their wardrobe. Black silk, black 
velvet, black lace, relieved by intimations of brighter colors, and 
by gleams from half-hidden jewelry, are the materials most Em- 
ployed. Gentlemen in uniform of black cloth and white linen 
announce their coming by the creaking of their boots, quenched 
in the padded carpeting. It cannot be said of these churches, as 
Mr. Carlyle remarked of certain London ones, that a pistol could 
be fired into a window across the church without much danger of 
hitting a Christian. The attendance is not generally very large ; 
but as the audience is evenly distributed over the wliole surface, 
it looks larger than it is. In a commercial city everything is apt 
to be measured by the commercial standard, and accordingly a 



AND HIS CHURCH. 351 

cburcli numerically weak, but financially strong, ranks, in tlie es- 
timation of the town, not according to its number of souls, but its 
number of dollars. We heard a fine young fellow, last summer, 
full of zeal for everything high and good, conclude a glowing ac- 
count of a sermon by saying that it was the direct means of add- 
ing to the church a capital of one hundred and seventy-five thou- 
sand dollars. He meant nothing low or mercenary ; he honestly 
exulted in the fact that the power and influence attached to the 
possession of one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars were 
thenceforward to be exerted on behalf of objects which he es- 
teemed the highest. If therefore the church before our view can- 
not boast of a numerous attendance, it more than consoles itself 
by the reflection, that there are a dozen names of talismanic 
power in Wall Street on its list of members. 

" But suppose the Doctor should leave you ? " objected a friend 
of ours to a trustee, who had been urging him to buy a pew in a 
fashionable church. 

" Well, my dear sir," was the business-like reply ; " suppose 
he should. We should immediately engage the very first talent 
which money can command." 

We can hardly help taking this simple view of things in rich 
commercial cities. Our Avorthy trustee merely put the thing on 
the correct basis. He frankly said what every church does, ought 
to do, and must do. He stated a universal fact in the plain and 
sensible language to which he was accustomed. In the same way 
these business-like Christians have borrowed the language of the 
Church, and speak of men who are " good " for a million. 

The congregation is assembled. The low mumble of the organ 
ceases. A female voice rises melodiously above the rustle of 
dry-goods and the whispers of those who wear them. So sweet 
and powerful is it, that a stranger might almost suppose it bor- 
rowed from the choir of heaven ; but the inhabitants of the town 
recognize it as one they have often heard at concerts or at the 
opera ; and they listen critically, as to a professional performance, 
which it is. It is well that highly artificial singing prevents 
the heai-er from catching the words of the song ; for it loould 
have rather an odd effect to hear rendered, in the modern Italian 
style, such plain straightforward words as these : — 



f 



\ 



352 HENRY WARD BEECHER 

" Can sinners hope for lieaven 
Who love this world so well ? 
Or dream of future happiness 
While on the road to hell? " 

The performance, however, is so exquisite that we do not think 
of these things, but hsten in rapture to the voice alone. "When 
the lady has finished her stanza, a noble barytone, also recognized 
as professional, takes up the strain, and performs a stanza, solo ; 
at the conclusion of which, four voices, in enchanting accord 
breathe out a third. It is evident that the "firit talent that 
money can command" has been "engaged" for the entertainment 
of the congregation ; and we are not surprised when the informa- 
tion is proudly communicated that the music costs a hundred and 
twenty dollars per Sunday. 

What is very surprising and well worthy of consideration is, 
that this beautiful music does not " draw." In our rovings about 
among the noted churches of New York, — of the kind which 
" engage the first talent that money can command," — we could 
never see that the audience was much increased by expensive 
professional music. On the contrary, we can lay it down as a 
general rule, that the costlier the music, the smaller is the aver- 
age attendance. The afternoon service at Trinity Church, for 
example, is little more than a delightful gratuitous concert of 
boys, men, and organ ; and the spectacle of the altar brilliantly 
lighted by candles is novel and highly picturesque. The sermon 
also is of the fashionable length, — twenty minutes ; and yet the 
usual afternoon congregation is about two hundred' persons. 
Those celestial strains of music, — well, they enchant the ear, 
if the ear happens to be within hearing of them ; but somehow 
they do not furnish a continuous attraction. 

"When this fine prelude is ended, the minister's part begins ; 
and, unless he is a man of extraordinary bearing and talents, 
every one present is conscious of a kind of lapse in the tone of 
the occasion. Genius composed the music ; the " first talent " 
executed it ; the performance has thrilled the soul, and exalted 
expectation ; but the voice now heard may be ordinary, and the 
words uttered may be homely, or even common. No one unac- 



AND HIS CHURCH. 353 

customed to the place can help feeling a certaui incongruity be- 
tween the language heard and the scene witnessed. Everything 
we see is modern ; the words we hear are ancient. The preacher 
speaks of " humble believers," and we look around and ask, 
"Where are they ? Are these costly and elegant persons bumble 
believers ? Far be it from us to intimate that they are not ; we 
are speaking only of their appearance, and its effect upon a cas- 
ual beholder. The clergyman reads, 

" Come let us join m sweet accord," 

and straightway four hired performers execute a piece of difficult 
music to an audience sitting passive. He discourses upon the 
" pleasures of the world," as being at war with the interests of 
the soul ; and while a severe sentence to this effect is coming 
from his lips, down the aisle marches the sexton, showing some 
stranger to a seat, who is a professional master of the revels. He 
expresses, perchance, a fervent desire that the heathen may be 
converted to Christianity, and we catch ourselves saying, " Does 
he mean this sort of thing ? " When we pronounce the word 
Christianity, it calls up recollections and associations that do not 
exactly harmonize with the scene around us. We think rather 
of the fishermen of Palestine, on the lonely sea-shore ; of the 
hunted fugitives of Italy and Scotland ; we think of it as some- 
thing lowly, and suited to the lowly, — a refuge for the forsaken 
and the defeated, not the luxury of the rich and the ornament of 
the strong. It may be an infirmity of our mind ; but we experi- 
ence a cerfain dilTiculty in realizing that the sumptuous and costly 
apparatus around us has anything in common with what we have 
been accustomed to think of as Christianity. 

Sometimes, the incongruity reaches the point of the ludicrous. 
We recently heard a very able and well-intentioned preacher, 
near the Fifth Avenue, ask the ladies before him whether they 
were in the habit of speaking to their female attendants about 
their souls' salvation, — particularly those who dressed their hair. 
He especially mentioned the hair-dressers ; because, as he truly 
remarked, ladies are accustomed to converse with those artistes, 
during the operation of hair-dressing, on a variety of topics ; and 

w 



354 HENRY WARD BEECHER 

the opportunity was excellent to say a word on the one most im- 
portant. This incident perfectly illustrates what we mean by the 
seeming incongruity between the ancient cast of doctrine and the 
modernized people to whom it is preached. "We have heard ser- 
mons in fashionable churches in New York, laboriously prepared 
and earnestly read, which had nothing in them of the modern 
spirit, contained not the most distant allusion to modern modes of 
living and sinning, had no suitableness whatever to the people or 
the time, and from which everything that could rouse or interest 
a human soul living on Manhattan Island in the year 18G7 
seemed to have been purposely pruned away. And perhaps, if a 
clergyman really has no message to deliver, his best course is to 
utter a jargon of nothings. 

Upon the whole, the impression left upon the mind of the visit- 
or to the fashionable church is, that he has been looking, not 
upon a living body, but a decorated image. 

It may be, however, that the old conception of a Christian 
church, as the one place where all sorts and conditions of men 
came together to dwell upon considerations interesting to all 
equally, is not adapted to modei'n society, wherein one man dif- 
fers from another in knowledge even more than a king once dif- 
fered from a peasant in rank. "When all were ignorant, a mass 
chanted in an unknown tongue, and a short address warnins: 
against the only vices known to ignorant people, sufficed for the 
whole community. But what form of service can be even 
imagined, that could satisfy Bridget, who cannot read, and her 
mistress, who comes to church cloyed with the dainties of half a 
dozen literatures ? "Who could preach a sermon that would hold 
attentive the man saturated with Buckle, Mill, Spencer, Thacke- 
ray, Emerson, Humboldt, and Agassiz, and the man whose only 
literary recreation is the dime novel ? In the good old times, 
when terror was latent in every soul, and the preacher had only 
to dehver a very simple message, pointing out the one way to 
escape endless torture, a very ordinary mortal could arrest and 
retain attention. But this resource is gone forever, and the mod- 
ern preacher is thrown upon the resources of his own mind and 
talent. There is great difficulty here, and it does not seem hkely 



# 



AND HIS CHURCH. ' 355 

to diminish. It may be, that never again, as long as time shall 
endure, will ignorant and learned, masters and servants, poor and 
rich, feel themselves at home in the same church. 

At present we are impressed, and often oppressed, with the too 
evident fact, that neither the intelligent nor the uninstructed souls 
are so well ministered to, in things spiritual, as we could imagine 
they might be. The fashionable world of New York goes to 
church every Sunday morning with tolerable punctuality, and yet 
it seems to drift rapidly toward Paris. What it usually hears at 
church does not appear to exercise controlling influence over its 
conduct or its character. 

Among the churches about New York to which nothing we 
have said applies, the one that presents the strongest contrast to 
tlie fashionable church is Henry "Ward Beecher's. Some of the 
difficulties resulting from the altered state of opinion in recent 
times have been overcome there, and an institution has been 
created which appears to be adapted to the needs, as well as to 
the tastes, of the people frequenting it. We can at least say of 
it, that it is a living body, and not a decorated image. 

For many years, this church upon Brooklyn Heights has been, 
to the best of the visitors to the metropolis, the most interesting 
object in or near it. Of Brooklyn itself, — a great assemblage o;" 
residences, without much business or stir, — it seems the animat- 
ing soul. We have a fancy, that we can tell by the manner and 
bearing of an inhabitant of the place whether he attends this 
church or not; for there is a certain joyousness, candor, and dem- 
ocratic simplicity about the members of that congregation, which 
might be styled Beecherian, if there were not a better word. 
This church is simply the most characteristic thing of America. 
If we had a foreigner in charge to whom we wished to reveal 
this country, we should like to push him in, hand him over to 
one of the brethren who perform the arduous duty of providing 
seats for visitors, and say to him : " There, stranger, you have 
arrived ; this is the United States. The New Testament, Plym- 
outh Rock, and the Fourth of July, — this is what they have 
brought us to. What the next issue will be, no one can tell ; but 
this is about what we are at present." 



356 HENRY WARD EEECHER 

We cannot imagine what the brethren could have been think- 
ing about when they ordered the new bell that hangs in the tower 
of Plymouth Church. It is the most superfluous article in the 
known world. The New-Yorker who stejis on board the Fulton 
ferry-boat about ten o'clock on Sunday morning finds himself 
accompanied by a large crowd of people who bear the visible 
stamp of strangers, who are going to Henry "Ward Beecher's 
church. You can pick them out with perfect certainty. You 
see the fact in their countenances, in their dress, in their demean- 
or, as well as hear it in words of eager expectation. They are 
the kind of people who regard wearing-apparel somewhat in the 
light of its utility, and are not crushed by their clothes. They 
are the sort of people who take the " Tribune," and get up courses 
of lectures in the country towns. From every quarter of Brook- 
lyn, in street cars and on foot, streams of people are converging 
toward the same place. Every Sunday morning and evening, 
rain or shine, there is the same concourse, the same crowd at the 
gates before they are open, and the same long, laborious effort to 
get thirty-five hundred people into a building that will seat but 
twenty-seven hundred. Besides the ten or twelve membei's of 
the church who volunteer to assist in this labor, there is employed 
a force of six policemen at the doors, to prevent the multitude 
from choking all ingress. Seats are retained for their proprietors 
until ten minutes before the time of beginning ; after that the 
strangers are admitted. Mr. Buckle, if he were with us still, 
would be pleased to know that his doctrine of averages holds 
good in this instance ; since every Sunday about a churchful of 
persons come to this church, so that not many who come fail to 
get in. 

There is nothing of the ecclesiastical drawing-room in the ar- 
rangements of this edifice. It is a very plain brick building, in 
a narrow street of small, pleasant houses, and the interior is only 
striking from its extent and convenience. The simple, old-fash- 
ioned design of the builder was to provide seats for as many peo- 
ple as the space would hold ; and in executing this design, he 
constructed one of the finest interiors in the country, since the 
most pleasing and inspiriting spectacle that human eyes ever be- 



AND HIS CnUKCH. 857 

hold in tliis world is such an assembly as fills this church. The 
audience is grandly displayed in those wide, rounded galleries, 
surging up high against the white walls, and scooped out deep in 
the slanting floor, leaving the carpeted platform the vortex of an 
arrested whirlpool. Often it happens that two or three little 
children get lodged upon the edge of the platform, and sit there 
on the carpet among the flowers during the service, giving to the 
picture a singularly pleasing relief, as though they and the bou- 
quets had been arranged by the same skilful hand, and for the 
same purpose. And it seems quite natural and proper that child- 
ren should form part of so bright and joyous an occasion. Behind 
the platform rises to the ceiling the huge organ, of dark wood 
and silvered pipes, with fans of trumpets pointing heavenward 
from the top. This enormous toy occupies much space that 
could be better filled, and is only less superfluous than the 
bell ; but w^e must pardon and indulge a foible. We could never 
see that Mr. Forrest walked any better for having such thick 
legs ; yet they have their admirers. Blind old Handel played 
on an instrument very different from this, but the sexton had to 
eat a cold Sunday dinner ; for not a Christian would stir as long 
as the old man touched the keys after service. But not old Han- 
del nor older Gabriel could make such music as swells and roars 
from three thousand human voices, — the regular choir of Ply- 
mouth Church. It is a decisive proof of the excellence and hearti- 
ness of this choir, that the great organ has not lessened its eiFec- 
tiveness. 

It is not clear to the distant spectator by what apertui-e Mr. 
Beecher enters the chui'ch. He is suddenly discovered to be 
present, seated in his place on the platform, — an under-sized 
gentleman in a black stock. His hair combed behind his ears, 
and worn a little longer than usual, imparts to his appearance 
something of the Puritan, and calls to mind his father, the cham- 
pion of orthodoxy in heretical Boston. In conducting the opening 
exercises, and, indeed, on all occasions of ceremony, Mr. Beecher 
shows himself an artist, — both his language and his demeanor 
being marked by tlie most refined decorum. An elegant, finished 
simplicity characterizes all he does and says : not a word too 



358 HENRY WARD BEECHER 

mucli, nor a word misused, nor a word waited for, nor an unhar- 
raonious movement, mars the satisfaction of the auditor. The 
habit of living for thirty years in the view of a multitude, togeth- 
er with a natural sense of the becoming, and a quick sympathy 
with men and circumstances, has wrought up his public demeanor 
to a point near perfection. A candidate for public honors could 
not study a better model. This is the more remarkable, because 
it is a purely spiritual triumph. Mr. Beecher's person is not im- 
posing, nor his natural manner graceful. It is his complete ex- 
tirpation of the desire of producing an illegitimate effect ; it is 
his sincerity and genuineness as a human being ; it is the 'dignity 
of his charactex-, and his command of his powers, — which give 
him this easy mastery over every situation in which he iinds him- 
self. 

Extempore prayers are not, perhaps, a proper subject for 
comment. The grand feature of the preliminary services of 
this church is the singing, which is not executed by the first 
talent that money can command. "When the prelude upon the 
organ is finished, the whole congregation, almost every individual 
in it, as if by a spontaneous and irresistible impulse, stands up 
and sinG;s. We are not aware that anvthinij has ever been done 
or said to bring about this result ; nor does the minister of the 
church set the example, for he usually remains sitting and silent. 
It seems as if every one in the congregation was so full of some- 
thing that he felt impelled to get up and sing it out. In other 
churches where congregational singing is attempted, there are 
usually a number of languid Christians who remain seated, and 
a large number of others who remain silent ; but here there is 
a strange unanimity about the performance. A sailor might as 
well try not to join in the chorus of a forecastle song as a mem- 
ber of this joyous host not to sing. When the last preliminary 
singing is concluded, the audience is in an excellent condition to 
sit and listen, their whole corporeal system having been pleasant- 
ly exercised. 

The sermon which follows is new wine in an old bottle. Up 
to the moment when the text has been announced and briefly 
explained, the service has all been conducted upon the ancient 



AND HIS CHURCH. 359 

model, and chiefly in the ancient phraseology ; but from the 
moment when Mi'. Beecher swings free from the moorings of his 
text, and gets fairly under way, his sermon is modern. No 
matter how fervently he may have been praying supernaturalism, 
he preaches pure cause and effect. His text may savor of old 
Palestine; but his sei-mon is inspired by New York and Brook- 
lyn ; and neai'ly all that he says, when he is most himself, finds 
an approving response in the mind of every well-disposed person, 
whether orthodox or heterodox in his creed. 

What is religion ? That, of course, is the great question. Mr. 
Beecher says : Religion is the slow, laborious, self-conducted 
EDUCATION of the wholo man, from grossness to refinement, from 
sickliness to health, from ignorance to knowledge, from selfishness 
to justice, from justice to nobleness, from cowardice to valor. In 
treating this topic, whatever he may pray or read or assent to, 
he preaches cause and effect, and nothing else. Regeneration he 
does not represent to be some mystei'ious, miraculous influence ex- 
erted upon a man from without, but the man's own act, wholly and 
always, and in every stage of its progress. His general way of 
discoursing upon this subject would satisfy the most rationalized 
mind ; and yet it does not appear to offend the most orthodox. 

This apparent contradiction between the spirit of his preaching 
and the facts of his position is a severe puzzle to some of our 
thorough-going friends. They ask. How can a man demonstrate 
that the fall of rain is so governed by unchanging laws that the 
shower of yesterday dates back in its causes to the origin of 
things, and, having proved this to the comprehension of every 
soul present, finish by praying for an immediate outpouring upon 
the thirsty fields ? We confess that, to our modern way of think- 
ing, there is a contradiction here, but there is none at all to an 
heir of the Puritans. We reply to our impatient young friends, 
that Henry Ward Beecher at once represents and assists the 
American Christian of the present time, just because of this 
seeming contradiction. He is a bridge over which we are pass- 
ing from the creed-enslaved past to the perfect freedom of the 
future. Mr. Lecky, in his " History of the Spirit of Rational- 
ism," has shown the process by which truth is advanced. Old 



360 HENRY WAED BEECHER 

errors, he says, do not die because tliey are refuted, but fade out 
because they are neglected. Oue hundred and fifty years ago, 
our ancestors were perplexed, and even distressed, by something 
they called the doctrine of Original Sin. No one now concerns 
himself either to refute or assert the doctrine ; few people know 
what it is ; we all simply let it alone, and it fades out. John 
Wesley not merely believed in witchcraft, but maintained that a 
belief in witchcraft was essential to salvation. All the world, 
except here and there an enlightened and fearless person, be- 
lieved in witchcraft as late as the year 1750. That belief has 
not perished because its folly was demonstrated, but because the 
average human mind grew past it, and let it alone until it faded 
out in the distance. Or we might compai'e the great body of 
beliefs to a banquet, in which every one takes what he likes best ; 
and the master of the feast, observing what is most in demand, 
keeps an abundant supply of such viands, but gradually with- 
draws those which are neglected. IMr. Beecher has helped him- 
self to such beliefs as are congenial to him, and shows an exqui- 
site tact in passing by those which interest him not, and which 
have lost regenerating power. There are minds which cannot be 
content with anything like vagueness or inconsistency in their 
opinions. They must know to a certainty whether the sun and 
moon stood still or not. His is not a mind of that cast ; he can 
" hover on the confines of truth," and leave the less inviting parts 
of the landscape veiled in mist unexplored. Indeed, the great 
aim of his preaching is to show the insignificance of opinion com- 
pared with right feeling and- noble living, and he prepares the 
way for the time when every conceivable latitude of mere opinion 
shall be allowed and encouraged. 

One remarkable thing about his preaching is, that he has not, 
like so many men of liberal tendencies, fallen into milk-and- 
waterism. He often gives a foretaste of the terrific power 
which preachers will wield when they draw inspiration from 
science and life. Without ever frightening people with hoi-rid 
pictures of the future, he has a sense of the perils which beset 
human life here, upon this bank and shoal of time. How need- 
less to draw upon the imagination, in depicting the consequences 



AXD HIS CHURCH. 361 

of violating natural law ! Suppose a preacher should give a 
plain, cold, scientific exhibition of the penalty which Nature 
exacts for the crime, so common among church-going ladies and 
others, of murdering their unborn oiFspring ! It would appall 
the Devil. Scarcely less terrible are the consequences of the 
most common vices and meannesses when they get the mastery. 
Mr. Beecher has frequently shown, by powerful delineations of 
this kind, how large a part legitimate terror must ever play in 
the services of a true church, when the terrors of superstition 
have wholly faded out. It cannot be said of his preaching, that 
he preaches " Christianity with the bones taken out." He does 
not give " twenty minutes of tepid exhortation," nor amuse his 
auditors with elegant and melodious essays upon virtue. 

We need not say that his power as a public teacher is due, in 
a great degree, to his fertility in illustrative similes. Three or 
four volumes, chiefly filled with these, as they have been caught 
from his lips, are before the public, and are admired on both con- 
tinents. jMany of them are most strikingly happy, and flood his 
subject with light. The smiles that break out upon the sea of 
upturned faces, and the laughter that whispers round the as- 
sembly, are often due as much to the aptness as to the humor of 
the illustration : the mind receives an agreeable shock of surprise 
at finding a resemblance where only the widest dissimilarity had 
before been perceived. 

Of late years, Mr. Beecher never sends an audience away half 
satisfied ; for he has constantly grown with the growth of his 
splendid opportunity. How attentive the great assembly, and 
how quickly responsive to the points he makes ! That occasional 
ripple of laughter, — it is not from any want of seriousness in the 
speaker, in the subject, or in the congregation, nor is it a Row- 
land Hill eccentricity. It is simply that it has pleased Heaven 
to endow this genial soul with a quick perception of the likeness 
there is between things unlike ; and, in the heat and torrent of 
his speech, the suddenly discovered similarity amuses while it in- 
structs. Philosophers and purists may cavil at parts of these 
sermons, and, of course, they are not perfect ; but who can deny 
that their general effect is civilizing, humanizing, elevating, and 
16 



862 HENRY WAKD BEECHER 

regenerating, and that this master of preaching is the true brother 
of all those high and bright spirits, on both sides of the ocean, 
who are striving to make the soul of this age fit to inhabit and 
nobly impel its new body ? 

The sermon over, a livelier song brings the .service to a happy 
conclusion ; and slowly, to the thunder of the new organ, the great 
assembly dissolves and oozes away. 

The Sunday services are not the whole of this remarkable 
church. It has not yet adopted Mrs. Stowe's suggestion of pro- 
viding billiard-rooms, bowling-alleys, and gymnastic apparatus for 
the development of Christian muscle, though these may come in 
time. The building at present contains eleven apartments, among 
which are two large parlors, wherein, twice a month, there is a 
social gathering of the church and congregation, for conversation 
with tlie pastor and with one anothei'. Perhaps, by and by, 
these will be always open, so as to furnish club conveniences to 
young men who have no home. Doubtless, this fine social or- 
ganization is destined to development in many directions not yet 
contemplated. • 

Among the ancient customs of New England and its colonies 
(of which Brooklyn is one) is the Friday-evening prayer-meet- 
ing. Some of our readers, perhaps, have dismal recollections of 
their early compelled attendance on those occasions, when, with 
their hands firmly held in the maternal grasp, lest at the last 
moment they should bolt under cover of the darkness, they glided 
round into the back parts of the church, lighted by one smoky 
lantern hung over the door of the lectuwe-room, itself dimly 
lighted, and as silent as the adjacent chambers of the dead. 
Female figures, demure in dress and eyes cast down, flitted noise- 
lessly in, and the awful stillness was only broken by the heavy 
boots of the few elders and deacons who constituted the male 
portion of the exceedingly slender audience. With difficulty, 
and sometimes, only after two or three failures, a hymn was 
raised, which, when in fullest tide, was only a dreary wail, — 
how unmelodious to the ears of unreverential youth, gifted with 
a sense of the ludicrous ! How long, how sad, how pointless the 
prayers ! How easy to believe, down in that dreary cellar, that 



AND HIS CHURCH. 363 

this world was but a wilderness, and man " a feeble piece " ! 
Deacon Jones could speak up briskly enough when he was selling 
two yards of shilling calico to a farmer's wife sharp at a bargain ; 
but in that apartment, contiguous to the tombs, it seemed natural 
that he should utter dismal views of life in bad grammar through 
his nose. Mrs. Jones was cheerful when she gave her little tea- 
party the evening before ; but now she appeared to assent, with- 
out surprise, to the statement that she was a pilgrim travelling 
through a vale of tears. Veritable pilgrims, who do actually 
meet in an oasis of the desert, have a merry time of it, travellers 
tell us. It was not so with these good souls, inhabitants of a 
pleasant place, and anticipating an eternal abode in an inconceiv- 
ably delightful paradise. But then there was the awful chance 
of missing it ! And the reluctant youth, dragged to this melan- 
choly scene, who avenged themselves by giving select imitations 
of deaconian eloquence for the amusement of young friends, — 
what was to become of them ? It was such thoughts, doubtless, 
that gave to those excellent people their gloomy habit of mind ; 
and if their creed expressed the literal truth • respecting man's 
destiny, character, and duty, terror alone was rational, and laugh- 
ter was hideous and defiant mockery. What room in a benevo- 
lent heart for joy, when a point of time, a moment's space 
removed us to that heavenly place, or shut us up in hell ? 

From the time when we were accustomed to attend such meet- 
ings, long ago, we never saw a Friday-evening meeting till the 
other night, when we found ourselves in the lecture-room of 
Plymouth Church. ■ 

The room is large, very lofty, brilliantly lighted by reflectors 
affixed to the ceiling, and, except the scarlet cushions on the 
settees, void of upholstery. It was filled full with a cheerful 
company, not one of whom seemed to have on more or richer 
clothes than she had the moral strength to wear. Content and 
pleasant expectation sat on every countenance, as when people 
have come to a festival, and await the summons to the banquet. 
No pulpit, or anything like a pulpit, cast a shadow over the scene ; 
but in its stead there was a rather large platform, raised two 
steps, covered with dark green canvas, and having upon it a very 



364 HENRY WAKD BEECHER 

small table and one cliair. The red-cusliioned settees were so 
arranged as to enclose the green platform all about, except on 
one side ; so that he who should sit upon it would appear to be 
in the midst of the people, raised above them that all might see 
him, yet still among them and one of them. At one side of the 
platform, but on the floor of the room, among the settees, there 
was a piano open. Mr. Beecher sat near by, reading what ap- 
peared to be a letter of three or four sheets. The whole scene 
was so little like what we commonly undei'stand by the word 
" meeting," the people there were so little in a " meeting " state 
of mind, and the subsequent proceedings were so informal, un- 
studied, and social, that, in attempting to give this account of 
them, we almost feel as if we were reporting for print the 
conversation of a private evening party. Anything more unlike 
an old-fashioned prayer-meeting it is not possible to conceive. 

Mr. Beecher took his seat upon the platform, and, after a short 
pause, began the exercises by saying, in a low tone, these words: 
'< Six twenty-two." 

A rustling of the leaves of hymn-books interpreted the mean- 
ing of this mystical utterance, which otherwise might have been 
taken as announcing a discourse upon the prophetic numbers. 
The piano confirmed the interpretation ; and then the company 
burst into one of those joyous and unanimous singings which are 
so enchanting a feature of the services of this church. Loud rose 
the beautiful harmony of voices, constraining every one to join in 
the song, even those most unused to sing. When it was ended, 
the pastor, in the same low tone, pronounced a name ; upon which 
one of the brethren rose to his feet, and the rest of the assembly 
slightly inclined their heads. It would not, as we have remarked, 
be becoming in us to say anything upon this portion of the pro- 
ceedings, except to note that the prayers were all brief, perfectly 
quiet and simple, and free from the routine or regulation expres- 
sions. There were but two or three of them, alternating with 
singing ; and when that part of the exercises was concluded, Mr. 
Beecher had scarcely spoken. The meeting ran alone, in the 
most spontaneous and pleasant manner ; and, with all its hearti- 
ness and simplicity, there was a certain refined decorum pervad- 



AND HIS CHURCH. 365 

ing all that was done and said. There was a pause after the last 
hymn died away, and then Mr. Beecher, still seated, began, in 
the tone of conversation, to speak, somewhat after this manner. 

" "When," said he, " I first began to walk as a Christian, in my 
youthful zeal I made many resolutions that were well meant, but 
indiscreet. Among others, I remember I resolved to pray, at 
least once, in some way, every hour that I was awake. I tried 
faithfully to keep this resolution, but never having succeeded a 
single day, I suffered the pangs of self-reproach, until reflection 
satisfied me that the only wisdom possible, with regard to such a 
resolve, was to break it. I remember, too, that I made a resolu- 
tion to speak upon religion to every pei'son with whom I con- 
versed, — on steamboats, in the streets, anywhere. In this, also, 
I failed, as I ought ; and I soon learned that, in the sowing of 
such seed, as in other sowings, times and seasons and methods 
must be considered and selected, or a man may defeat his own 
object, and make religion loathsome." 

In language like this he introduced the topic of the evening's 
conversation, which was, How far, and on what occasions, and in 
what manner, one person may invade, so to speak, the personality 
of another, and speak to him upon his moral condition. The pas- 
tor expressed his own opinion, always in the conversational tone, 
in a talk of ten minutes' duration ; in the course of which he ap- 
plauded, not censured, the delicacy which causes most people to 
shrink from doing it. He said that a man's personality was not 
a macadamized road for every vehicle to drive upon at will ; but 
rather a sacred enclosure, to be entered, if at all, with the consent 
of the owner, and with deference to his feelings and tastes. He 
maintained, however, that there were times and modes in which 
this might properly be done, and that every one had a duty to 
perform of this nature. When he had finished his observations, 
he said the subject was open to the remarks of others ; whereupon 
a brother instantly rose and made a very honest confession. 

He said that he had never attempted to perform the duty in 
question without having a palpitation of the heart and a complete 
"turning over" of his inner man. He had often reflected upon 
this curious fact, but was not able to account for it. He had not 



366 HENRY WARD BEECHER 

allowed tins repugnance to prevent his doing the duty ; but he 
always had to rush at it and perform it by a sort of coup de inain; 
for if he allowed himself to think about the matter, he could not 
do it at all. He concluded by saying that he should be very 
much obliged to any one if he could explain this mystery. 

The pastor said : " May it not be the natural delicacy we feel, 
and ought to feel, in approaching the interior consciousness of 
another person ? " 

Another brother rose. There was no hanarino; back at this 
meeting ; there were no awkward pauses ; every one seemed full 
of matter. The new speaker was not inclined to admit the ex- 
planation suggested by the pastor. " Suppose," said he, " v/e 
were to see a man in imminent danger of immediate destruction, 
and there was one way of escape, and but one, which we saw and 
he did not, should we feel any delicacy in running up to him and 
urging him to fly for his life ? Is it not a want of faith on our 
part that causes the reluctance and hesitation we all feel in urging 
others to avoid a peril so much more momentous ? " 

Mr. Beecher said the cases were not parallel. Irreligious 
persons, he remarked, were not in imminent danger of immediate 
death ; they miglit die to-morrow ; but in all probability they 
would not, and an ill-timed or injudicious admonition might for- 
ever repel them. "We must accept the doctrine of probabilities, 
and act in accordance with it in this pai'ticular, as in all others. 

Another brother had a puzzle to present for solution. He 
said that he too had experienced the repugnance to which allu- 
sion had been made ; but what surprised him most was, that the 
more he loved a person, and the nearer he was related to him, 
the more difficult he found it to converse with him upon his spir- 
itual state. Why is this ? "I should like to have this question 
answered," said he, " if there is an answer to it." 

Mr. Beecher observed that this was the universal experience, 
and he was conscious himself of a peculiar reluctance and embar- 
rassment in approaching one of his own household on the subject 
in question. He thought it was due to the fact that we respect 
more the personal rights of those near to us than we do those of 
others, and it was more difficult to break in upon the routine of 



V 



AND HIS CIIUECH. 367 

our ordinary faralliaritj with them. We are accustomed to a 
certain tone, which it is highly embarrassing to jar upon. 

Captain Duncan related two amusing anecdotes to illustrate 
the rig'lit way and the wrong way of introducing religious con- 
versation. In his office there was sitting one day a sort of lay 
preacher, who was noted for lugging in his favorite topic in the 
most forbidding and abrupt manner. A sea-captain came in, who 
was introduced to this individual. 

" Captain Porter," said he, with awful solemnity, " are you a 
captain in Israel ? " 

The honest sailor was so abashed and confounded at this novel 
salutation, that he could only stammer out an incoherent reply ; 
and he was evidently much disposed to give the tactless zealot a 
piece of his mind expressed in the language of the quarter-deck. 
When the solemn man took his leave, the disgusted captain said, 
" If ever I should be coming to your office again, and that man 
should be here, I wish you would send me word, and I '11 stay 
away." 

A few days after, another clergyman chanced to be in the 
office, no other than Mr. Beecher himself, and another captain 
came in, a roistering, swearing, good-hearted fellow. The con- 
versation fell upon sea-sickness, a malady to which Mr. Beecher 
is peculiarly liable. This captain also was one of the few sailors 
who are always sea-sick in going to sea, and gave a moving 
account of his sufferings from that cause. Mr. Beecher, after 
listening attentively to his tale, said, ' " Captain Duncan, if I 
was a preacher to such sailors as your friend here, I should rep- 
resent hell as an eternal voyage, with every man on board in the 
agonies of sea-sickness, the crisis always imminent, but never 
coming." 

This ludicrous and most unprofessional picture amused the old 
salt exceedingly, and won his entire good-will toward the author 
of it ; so that, after Mr. Beecher left, he said, " That 's a good 
fellow, Captain Duncan. I like him, and I 'd like to hear him 
talk more." 

Captain Duncan contended that this free-and-easy way of ad- 
dress was just the thing for such characters. Mr. Beecher had 



368 HENRY WARD BEECHER 

shown him, to his great surprise, that a man could be a decent 
and comfortable human being, although he was a minister, and 
had so gained his confidence and good-will that he could say any- 
thing to him at their next interview. Captain Duncan finished 
his remarks bj a decided expression of his disapproval of the 
canting regulation phrases so frequently employed by religious 
people, which are perfectly nauseous to men of the world. 

This interesting conversation lasted about three quarters of an 
hour, and ended, not because the theme seemed exhausted, but 
because the time was up. We have only given enough of it to 
convey some little idea of its spirit. The company again broke 
into one of their cheerful hymns, and the meeting was dismissed 
in the usual manner. 

During the whole evening not a canting word nor a false tone 
had been uttered. Some words were used, it is true, and some 
forms practised, which are not congenial to " men of the world," 
and some doctrines were assumed to be true which have become 
incredible to many of us. These, however, were not conspicuous 
nor much dwelt upon. The subject, too, of the conversation was 
less suitable to our purpose than most of the topics discussed at 
these meetings, which usually have a more direct bearing upon 
the conduct of life. Nevertheless, is it not apparent that such 
meetings as this, conducted by a man of tact, good sense, and ex- 
perience, must be an aid to good living ? Here were a number 
of people, — parents, business-men, and others, — most of them 
heavily burdened with responsibility, having notes and rents to 
pay, customers to get and keep, children to rear, — busy people, 
anxious people, of extremely diverse characters, but united by a 
common desire to live nobly. The difficulties of noble living are 
very great, — never so great, perhaps, as now and here, — and 
these people assemble every week to converse upon them. What 
more rational thing could they do ? If they came together to 
snivel and cant, and to support one another in a miserable conceit 
of being the elect of the human species, we might object. But 
no description can show how far from that, how opposite to that, 
is the tone, the spirit, the object, of the Friday-evening meeting 
at Plymouth Church. 



AND HIS CHURCH. 369 

Have we " Liberals " — as we presume to call ourselves — ever 
devised anything so well adapted as this to the needs of average 
mortals struggling with the ordinary troubles of life ? We know 
of nothing. Pliilosophical treatises, and arithmetical computations 
respecting the number of people who inhabited Palestine, may have 
their use, but they cannot fill the aching void in the heart of a 
lone widow, or teach an anxious father how to manage a trouble- 
some boy. There was an old lady near us at this meeting, — a 
good soul in a bonnet four fashions old, — who sat and cried for 
joy, as the brethren carried on their talk. She had come in 
alone from her solitary room, and enjoyed all the evening long a 
blended moral and literary rapture. It was a banquet of delight 
to her, the recollection of which would brighten all her week, and 
it cost her no more than air and sunlight. To the happy, the 
strong, the victorious, Shakespeare and the Musical Glasses may 
appear to suffice ; but the world is full of the weak, the wretched, 
and the vanquished. 

There was an infuriate heretic in Boston once, whose antipathy 
to what he called " superstition " was something that bordered upon 
lunacy. But the time came when he had a child, his only child, 
and the sole joy of his life, dead in the house. It had to be 
buried. The broken-hearted father could not endure the thought 
of his child's being carried out and placed in its grave without 
some outward mark of respect, some ceremonial which should 
recognize the difference between a dead child and a dead kitten ; 
and he was fain, at last, to go out and bring to his house a poor 
lame cobbler, who was a kind of Methodist preacher, to say and 
read a few words that should break the fall of the darling object 
into the tomb. The occurrence made no change in his opinions, 
but it revolutionized his feelings. He is as untheoloe:ical as 
ever ; but he would subscribe money to build a church, and he 
esteems no man more than an honest clergyman. 

If anything can be predicated of the future with certainty, it is, 
that the American people will never give up that portion of their 
heritage from the past which we call Sunday, but will always 
devote its hours to resting the body and improving the soul. All 
our theologies will pass away, but this will remain. Nor less 
16* X 



370 HENRY WARD BEECHER 

certain is it, that there will always be a class of men who will do, 
professionally and as their settled vocation, the work now done 
by the clergy. That woi-k can never be dispensed with, either 
in civilized or in barbarous communities. The great problem of 
civilization is, how to bring the higher intelligence of the com- 
munity, and its better moral feeling, to bear upon the mass 
of people, so that the lowest grade of intelligence and morals 
shall be always approaching the higher, and the higher still 
rising. A church purified of superstition solves part of this 
problem, and a good school system does the rest. 

All things improve in this world very much in the same way. 
The improvement originates in one man's mind, and, being carried 
into effect with evident good results, it is copied by others. We 
ai'e all apt lazily to run in the groove in which we find ourselves ; 
we are creatures of habit, and slaves of tradition. Now and 
then, however, in every profession and sphere, if they are untram- 
melled by law, an individual appears who is discontented with 
the ancient methods, or sceptical of the old traditions, or both, 
and he invents better ways, or arrives at more rational opinions. 
Other men look on and approve the improved process, or listen 
and imbibe the advanced belief. 

Now, there appears to be a man upon Brooklyn Heights who 
has found out a more excellent way of conducting a church than 
has been previously known. He does not waste the best hours 
of every day in writing sermons, but employs those hours in ab- 
sorbing the knowledge and experience which should be the matter 
of sermons. He does not fritter away the time of a public in- 
structor in " pastoral visits," and other useless visitations. His 
mode of conducting a public ceremonial reaches the finish of high 
art, which it resembles also in its sincerity and simplicity. Pie 
has known how to banish from his church everything that savors 
of cant and sanctimoniousness, — so loathsome to honest minds. 
Without formally rejecting time-honored forms and usages, he has 
infused mto his teachings more and more of the modern spirit, 
drawn more and more from science and life, less and less from 
tradition, until he has acquired the power of preaching sermons 
which Edwards and Voltaire, Whitefield and Tom Paine, would 



AND HIS CHURCH. 371 

heartily and equally enjoy. Surely, there is something in all 
this which could be imitated. The great talents with which he is 
endowed cannot be imparted, but we do not believe that his 
power is wholly derived from his talent. A man of only respect- 
able abilities, who should catch his spirit, practise some of his 
methods, and spend his strength in getting knowledge, and not in 
coining sentences, would be able anywhere to gather round him a 
concourse of hearers. The great secret is, t6 let orthodoxy 
slide, as something which is neither to be maintained nor refuted, 
— insisting only on the spirit of Christianity, and applying it to 
the life of the present day in this land. 

There are some reasons for thinking that the men and the or- 
ganizations that have had in charge the moral interests of the 
people of the United States for the last fifty years have not been 
quite equal to their trust. What are we to think of such results 
of New England culture as Douglas, Cass, Webster, and many 
other men of great ability, but strangely wanting in moral power ? 
What are we to think of the great numbers of Southern Yankees 
who were, and are, the bitterest foes of all that New England 
repft-esents ? What are we to think of the Rings that seem now- 
a-days to form themselves, as it were, spontaneously in every 
great corporation ? What of the club-houses that spring up at 
every corner, for the accommodation of husbands and fathers 
who find more attractions in wine, supper, and equivocal stories 
than in the society of their wives and children ? What are we 
to think of the fact, that among the people who can afford to adver- 
tise at the rate of a dollar and a half a line are those who pro- 
vide women with the means of killing their unboi'n children, — 
a double crime, murder and suicide ? What are we to think of 
the moral impotence of almost all women to resist the tyranny of 
fashion, and the necessity that appears to rest upon them to copy 
every disfiguration invented by the harlots of Paris ? What are 
we to think of the want both of masculine and moral force in 
men, which makes them helpless against the extravagance of 
their households, to support which they do fifty years' work in 
twenty, and then die ? What are we to think of the fact, that 



372 HENKY WARD BEECHEE AND HIS CHUECH. 

all the creatures living in the United States enjoy good health, 
except the human beings, who ai'e nearly all ill ? 

When we consider such things as these, we cannot help calling 
in question a kind of pubUc teaching which leaves the people in 
ignorance of so much that they most need to know. Henry 
Ward Beecher is the only clergyman we ever heard who habit- 
ually promulgates the truth, that to be ill is generally a sin, and 
always a shame. We never heard him utter the demoralizing 
falsehood, that this present life is short and of small account, and 
that nothing is worthy of much consideration except the life to 
come. He dwells much on the enormous lengtli of this life, and 
the prodigious revenue of happiness it may yield to those who 
comply with the conditions of happiness. It is his habit, also, to 
preach the duty which devolves upon every person, to labor for 
the increase of his knowledge and the general improvement of 
his mind. We have heard him say on the platform of his 
church, that it was disgraceful to any mechanic or clerk to let 
such a picture as the Heart of the Andes be exhibited for twen- 
ty-five cents, and not go and see it. Probably there is not one 
honest clergyman in the country who does not fairly earn his 
livelihood by the good he does, or by the evil he prevents. But 
not enough good is done, and not enough evil prevented. The 
sudden wealth that has come upon the world since the improve- 
ment of the steam-engine adds a new difficulty to the life of mil- 
lions. So far, the world does not appear to have made the best 
use of its too rapidly increased surplus. " We cannot sell a 
twelve-dollar book in this country," said a bookseller to us the 
other day. But how easy to sell two-hundred-dollar garments ! 
There seems great need of something that shall have power to 
spiritualize mankind, and make head against the reinforced influ- 
ence of material things. It may be tliat the true method of 
dealing with the souls of modern men has been, in part, dis- 
covered by Mr. Beecher, and that it would be well for persons 
aspiring to the same vocation to begin their preparation by mak- 
ing a pilgrimage to Brooklyn Heights. 



COMMODORE VANDERBILT 



COMMODORE VANDERBILT.* 



THE Staten Island ferry, on a fine afternoon in summer, is one 
of the pleasantest scenes which New York affords. The 
Island, seven miles distant from the city, forms one of the sides of 
the Narrows, through which the commerce of the city and the emi- 
grant shi^^s enter the magnificent bay that so worthily announces 
the grandeur of the New World. The ferry-boat, starting from 
the extremity of Manhattan Island, first gives its passengers a 
view of the East River, all alive with every description of craft ; 
then, gliding round past Governor's Island, dotted with camps and 
crowned with barracks, with the national flag floating above all, 
it afix)rds a view of the lofty bluffs which rise on one side of the 
Hudson and the long line of the mast-fringed city on the other ; 
then, rounding Governor's Island, the steamer pushes its way 
towards the Narrows, disclosing to view Fort Lafayette, so cele- 
brated of late, the giant defensive works opposite to it, the um- 
brageous and lofty sides of Staten Island, covered with villas, 
and, beyond all, the Ocean, lighted up by Coney Island's belt of 
snowy sand, glistening in the sun. 

Change the scene to fifty-five years ago : New York was then 
a town of eighty thousand people, and Staten Island was inhab- 
ited only by farmers, gardeners, and fishermen, who lived by sup- 
plying the city with provisions. No elegant seats, no picturesque 
villas adorned the hillsides, and pleasure-seekers found a nearer 

* This narrative of the business-life of Commodore Vanderbilt was wrltteu 
immediately after I had heard him tell the story himself. It was written at the 
request of Robert Bonner, Esq., and published by him in the New York Ledger 
of April 8, 1865. I should add, that several of the facts given were related 
to me at various times by members of Mr. Vanderbilt's family. 



376 COMMODORE VANDEEBILT. 

resort in Hoboken. The ferry then, if ferry it could be called, 
consisted of a few sail-boats, which left the island hi the raornino; 
loaded with vegetables and fish, and returned, if wind and tide 
permitted, at night. If a pleasure party occasionally visited 
Staten Island, they considered themselves in the light of bold 
adventurers, who had gone far beyond the ordinary limits of an 
excursion. There was only one thing in common between the 
ferry at that day and this : the boats started from the same spot. 
Where the ferry-house now stands at Whitehall was then the 
beach to which the boatmen brought their freight, and where they 
remained waiting for a return cargo. That was, also, the general 
boat-stand of the city. Whoever wanted a boat, for business or 
pleasure, repaired to Whitehall, and it was a matter of indiffer- 
ence to the boatmen from Staten Island, whether they returned 
home with a load, or shared in the general business of the port. 

It is to one of those Whitehall boatmen of 1810, that we liave 
to direct the reader's attention. He was distinguished from his 
comrades on the stand in several ways. Though master of a 
Staten Island boat that would carry twenty passengers, he was 
but sixteen years of age, and he was one of the handsomest, the 
most agile and athletic, young fellows that either Island could 
show. Young as he was, there was that in his face and bearing 
which gave assurance that he was abundantly competent to his 
work. He was always at his post betimes, and on the alert for a 
job. He always performed what he undertook. This summer 
of 1810 was his first season, but he had already an ample share 
of the best of the business of the harbor. 

Cornelius Vanderbilt was the name of this notable youth, — 
the same Cornelius Vanderbilt who has since built a hundred 
steamboats, who has since made a present to his country of a 
steamship of five thousand tons' burden, who has since bought 
lines of railroad, and who reported bis income to the tax commis- 
sioners, last year at something near three quarters of a million. 
The first money the steamboat-king ever earned was by carrying 
passengers between Staten Island and New York at eighteen 
cents each. 

His father, who was also named Cornelius, was the founder of 



COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 377 

the Staten Island ferry. He was a thriving farmer on the 
Island as early as 1794, tilling his own land near the Quarantine 
Ground, and conveying his produce to New York in his own 
boat. Frequently he would carry the produce of sonae of his 
neighbors, and, in course of time, he ran his boat regularly, leav- 
ing in the morning and leturuing at night, during the whole of 
the summer, and thus he established a ferry which has since be- 
come one of the most profitable in the world, carrying sometimes 
more than twelve thousand passengers in a day. He was an in- 
dustrious, enterprising, liberal man, and early acquired a proper- 
ty which for that time was affluence. His wife was a singularly 
wise and energetic woman. She was the main stay of the family, 
since her husband was somewhat too liberal for his means, and 
not always prudent in his projects. Once, when her husband 
had fatally involved himself, and their farm was in danger of be- 
ing sold for a debt of three thousand dollars, she produced, at the 
last extremity, her private store, and counted out the whole sum 
in gold pieces. She lived to the great age of eighty-seven, and 
left an estate of fifty thousand dollars, the fruit of her own indus- 
try and prudence. Her son, like many other distinguished men, 
loves to acknowledge that whatever he has, and whatever he is 
that is good, he owes to the precepts, the example, and the judi- 
cious government of his mother. 

Cornelius, the eldest of their family of nine children, was born 
at the old farm-house on Staten Island, May 27, 1794. A 
healthy, vigorous boy, fond of out-door sports, excelling his com- 
panions in all boyish feats, on land and water, he had an uncon- 
querable aversion to the confinement of the school-room. At that 
day, the school-room was, indeed, a dull and uninviting place, the 
lessons a tedious routine of learning by rote, and the teacher a 
tyrant, enforcing them by the terrors of the stick. The boy went 
to school a little, now and then, but learned little more than to 
read, write, and cipher, and these imperfectly. The only books 
he remembers using at school were the spelling-book and Testa- 
ment. His real education was gained in working on his father's 
farm, helping to sail his father's boat, driving his father's horses, 
swimming, riding, rowing, sporting with his young friends. He 



378 COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 

was a bold rider from infancy, and passionately fond of a fine 
horee. He tells his friends sometimes, that he rode a race-horse 
at full speed when he was but six years old. That he regrets not 
having acquired more school knowledge, that he values what is 
commonly called education, is shown by the care he has taken to 
have his own children well instructed. 

There never was a clearer proof than in his case that the child 
is father of the man. He showed in boyhood the very quality 
which lias most distinguished him as a man, — the power of accom- 
phshing things in spite of difficulty and opposition. He was a 
born conqueror. 

When he was twelve years old, his father took a contract for 
getting the cargo out of a vessel stranded near Sandy Hook, and 
transporting it to New York in lighters. It was necessary to 
carry the cargo in wagons across a sandy spit. Cornelius, with 
a little fleet of lightei's, three wagons, their horses and drivers, 
started from home solely charged with the management of this 
difficult aflPair. After loading the lighters and starting them for 
the city, he had to conduct his wagons home by land, — a long 
distance over Jersey sands. Leaving the beach with only six 
dollars, he reached South Amboy penniless, with six horses and 
three men, all hungry, still far from home, and separated from 
Staten Island by an arm of the sea half a mile wide, that could 
be crossed only by paying the ferryman six dollars. This was a 
puzzling jDredicament for a boy of twelve, and he pondered long 
how he could get out of it. At length he went boldly to the only 
innkeeper of the place, and addressed him thus : — 

" I have here three teams that I want to get over to Staten 
Island. If you will put us across, I '11 leave with you one of my 
horses in pawn, and if I don't send you back the six dollars with- 
in forty-eight hours you may keep the horse." 

The innkeeper looked into the bright, honest eyes of the boy 
for a moment and said : — 

" I '11 do it." 

And he did it. The horse in pawn was left with the ferryman 
on the Island, and he was redeemed in time. 
- Before he was sixteen he had made up his mind to earn his 



COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 379 

livelihood by navigation of some kind, and often, when tired of 
farm work, he had cast wistful glances at the outward-bound 
ships that passed his home. Occasionally, too, he had alarmed 
his mother by threatening to run away and go to sea. Hi^ pref- 
erence, however, was to become a boatman of New York harbor. 
On the first of May, 1810, — an important day in his history, — 
he made known his wishes to his mother, and asked her to ad- 
vance him a hundred dollars for the purchase of a boat. She 
replied : — 

" My son, on the twenty-seventh of this month you will be 
sixteen years old. If, by your birthday, you will plough, harrow, 
and plant with corn that lot," pointing to a field, " I will advance 
you the money." 

The field was one of eight acres, very rough, tough, and stony. 
He informed his young companions of his mother's conditional 
promise, and several of them readily agreed to help him. For 
the next two weeks the field presented the spectacle of a continu- 
ous " bee " of boys, picking up stones, ploughing, harrowing, and 
planting. To say that the work was done in time, and done 
thoroughly, is only another way of stating that it was undertaken 
and conducted by Cornelius Vanderbilt. On his birthday he 
claimed the fulfilment of his mother's promise. Reluctantly she 
gave him the money, considering his project only less wild than 
that of running away to sea. He hurried oif to a neighboring 
village, bought his boat, hoisted sail, and started for home one 
of the happiest youths in the world. His first adventure seemed 
to justify his mother's fears, for he struck a sunken wreck on his 
way, and just managed to run his boat ashore before she filled 
and sunk. 

Undismayed at this mishap, he began his new career. His 
success, as we have intimated, was speedy and great. He made 
a thousand dollars during each of the next three summers. Often 
he worked all night, but he was never absent from his post by 
day, and he soon had the cream of the boating business of the 
port. 

At that day parents claimed the services and the earnings of 
their children till they were twenty-one. In other words, families 



380 COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 

made common cause against the common enemy, Want. The 
arrangement between this young boatman and his parents was 
that he should give them all his day earnings and half his night 
earnings. He fulfilled his engagement faithfully until his parents 
released him from it, and with his own half of his earnings by 
night he bought all his clothes. He had forty competitors in the 
business, who, being all grown men, could dispose of their gains 
as they chose ; but of all the forty, he alone has emerged to 
prosperity and distinction. Why was this ? There were several 
reasons. He soon came to be the best boatman in the port. He 
attended to his business more regularly and strictly than any 
other. He had no vices. His comrades spent at night much of 
what they earned by day, and when the winter suspended their 
business, instead of living on the last' summer's savings, they were 
obliged to lay up debts for the next summer's gains to discharge. 
In those three years of willing servitude to his parents, Cornelius 
Vanderbilt added to the family's common stock of wealth, and 
gained for himself three things, — a perfect knowledge of his 
business, habits of industry and self-control, and the best boat in 
the harbor. 

The war of 1812 suspended the commerce of the port, but 
gave a great impulse to boating. There were men-of-war in the 
harbor and garrisons in the forts, which gave to the boatmen of 
Whitehall and Staten Island plenty of business, of which Corne- 
lius Vanderbilt had his usual share. In September, 1813, during a 
tremendous gale, a British fleet attempted to run past Fort Rich- 
mond. After the repulse, the commander of the fort, expecting 
a renewal of the attempt, was anxious to get the news to the 
city, so as to secure a reinforcement early the next day. Every 
one agreed that, if the thing could be done, there was but one 
man who could do it ; and, accordingly, young Vanderbilt was 
sent for. 

" Can you take a party up to the city in this gale ? " 

" Yes," was the reply ; " but I shall have to carry them part 
of the way under water." 

When he made fast to Coffee-House slip, an hour or two after, 
every man in the boat was drenched to the skin. But there they 
were, and the fort was reinforced the next morning. 



COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 381 

About this time, the young man had another important conver- 
sation with his mother, which, perhaps, was more embarrassino- 
than the one recorded above. He was in love. Sophia Johnson 
was the maiden's name, — a neighbor's lovely and industrious 
daughter, whose affections he had wooed and won. He asked 
his mother's consent to the match, and that henceforth he might 
have the disposal of his own earnings. She approved his choice, 
and released him from his obligations. During the rest of that 
season he labored with new energy, saved five hundred dollars, 
and, in December, 1813, when he laid up his boat for the winter, 
became the happy husband of the best of wives. 

In the following spring, a great alarm pervaded all the sea- 
board cities of America. Rumors were abroad of that gi-eat ex- 
pedition which, at the close .of the year, attacked New Orleans ; 
but, in the spring and summer, no one knew upon which port the 
blow would fall. The militia of New York were called out for 
three months, under a penalty of ninety-six dollars to whomso- 
ever should fail to appear at the rendezvous. The boatmen, in 
the midst of a flourishing business, and especially our young hus- 
band, were reluctant to lose the profits of a season's labor, which 
were equivalent, in their peculiar case, to the income of a whole 
year. An advertisement appeared one day in the papers which 
gave them a faint prospect of escaping this disaster. It was is- 
sued from the ofiice of the commissary-general, Matthew L. Da- 
vis, inviting bids from the boatmen for the contract of conveying 
provisions to the posts in the vicinity of New York during the 
three months, the contractor to be exempt from military duty. 
The boatmen caught at this, as a drowning man catches at a 
straw, and put in bids at rates preposterously low, — all except 
Cornelius Vanderbilt. 

" Why don't you send in a bid ? " asked his father. 

" Of what use would it be ? " replied the son. " They are of- 
fering to do the work at half-price. It can't be done at such 
rates." 

" Well," added the father, " it can do no harm to try for it." 

So, to please his father, but without the slightest expectation of 
getting the contract, he sent in an application, ofiering to trans- 



382 COMMODORE VANDERBILT, 

port the provisions at a price which would enable him to do it 
with the requisite certainty and promptitude. His offer was sim- 
ply fair to both parties. 

On the day named for the awai-ding of the contract, all the 
boatmen but him assembled in the commissary's office. He re- 
mained at the boat-stand, not considering that he had any in- 
terest in the matter. One after another, his comrades returned 
with long faces, sufficiently indicative of their disappointment ; 
until, at length, all of them had come in, but no one bringing the 
prize. Puzzled at this, he strolled himself to the office, and 
asked the commissary if the contract had been given. 

" O yes," said Davis ; " that business is settled. Cornelius 
Vanderbilt is the man." 

He was thunderstruck. 

" What ! " said the commissary, observing his astonishment, 
" is it you ? " 

" My name is Cornelius Vanderbilt." 

" Well," said Davis, " don't you know why we have given the 
contract to you ? " 

« No." 

" Why, it is because we want this business doiie, and we know 
you '11 do it." 

Matthew Lc Davis, as the confidant of Aaron Burr, did a good 
many foolish things in his life, but on this occasion he did a wise 
one. The contractor asked him but one favor, which was, that 
the daily load of stores might be ready for him every evening at 
six o'clock. There were six posts to be supplied : Harlem, Hurl 
Gate, Ward's Island, and three others in the harbor or at the 
Narrows, each of which required one load a week. Young Van- 
derbilt did all this work at night ; and although, during the 
whole period of three months, he never once fiiiled to perform 
his contract, he was never once absent from his stand in the day- 
time. He slept when he could, and when he could not sleep he 
did without it. Only on Sunday and Sunday night could he be 
said to rest. There was a rare harvest for boatmen that sum- 
mer. Transporting sick and furloughed soldiers, naval and mil- 
itary officers, the friends of the militia men, and pleasure-seekers 



COMMODORE VANDEEBILT. 383 

visiting the forts, kept those of the boatmen who had " escaped 
the draft," profitably busy. It was not the time for an enterpris- 
ing man to be absent from his post. 

From the gains of that summer he built a superb little schooner, 
the Di-ead ; and, the year following, the joyful year of peace, he 
and his brother-in-law, Captain De Forrest, launched the Char- 
lotte, a vessel large enough for coasting service, and the pride of 
the harbor for model and speed. In this vessel, when the sum- 
mer's work was over, he voyaged sometimes along the Southern 
coast, brinnjino; home considerable freights from the Carolinas. 
Knowing the coast thoroughly, and being one of the boldest and 
most expert of seamen, he and his vessel were always ready 
when there was something to be done of difficulty and peril. 
During the three years succeeding the peace of 1815, he saved 
three tliousand dollars a year ; so that, in 1818, he possessed two 
or three of the nicest little craft in the harbor, and a cash capital 
of nine thousand dollars. 

The next step of Captain Vanderbilt astonished both his rivals 
and his friends. He deliberately abandoned his flourishing busi- 
ness, to accept the post of captain of a small steamboat, at a 
salary of a thousand dollars a year. By slow degrees, against 
the opposition of the boatmen, and the terrors of the public, 
steamboats had made their way ; until, in 1817, ten years after 
Fulton's experimental trip, the long head of Captain Vanderbilt 
clearly comprehended that the supremacy of sails was gone for- 
ever, and he resolved to ally himself to the new power before 
being overcome by it. Besides, he protests, that in no enterprise 
of his life has his chief object been the gain of money. Being 
in the business of carrying passengers, he desired to carry them 
in the best manner, and by the best means. Business has ever 
been to him a kind of game, and his ruling motive was and is, to 
play it so as to win. To carry his point, that has been the mo- 
tive of his business career ; but then his point has generally 
been one which, being cai'ried, brought money with it. 

At that day, passengers to Philadelphia were conveyed by 
steamboat from New York to New Brunswick, where they re- 
mained all night, and the next morning took the stage for Tren- 



384 COMMODORE VAXDERDILT. 

ton, whence they were carried to Phihidelpbia by steamboat. 
The proprietor of part of this line was the once celebrated 
Thomas Gibbons, a man of enterprise and capital. It was in his 
service that Captain Vauderbilt spent the next twelve years of 
his life, commanding the steamer plying between New York and 
New Brunswick. The hotel at New Brunswick, where the pas- 
sengers passed the night, which had never paid expenses, was let 
to him rent free, and under the efficient management of Mrs. 
Vanderbilt, it became profitable, and afforded the passengers such 
excellent entertainment as to enhance the popularity of the line. 

In engaging with Mr. Gibbons, Captain Vanderbilt soon found 
that he had put his head into a hornet's nest. The State of New 
York had granted to Fulton and Livingston the exclusive right 
of running steamboats in New York waters. Thomas Gibbons, 
believing the grant unconstitutional, as it was afterwards declared 
by the Supreme Court, ran his boats in defiance of it, and thus 
involved himself in a long and fierce contest with the authorities 
of New York. The brunt of this battle fell upon his new captain. 
There was one period when for sixty successive days an attempt 
was made to arrest him ; but the captain baffled every attempt. 
Leaving his crew in New Jersey (for they also were liable to 
arrest), he would approach the New York wharf with a lady at 
the helm, while he managed the engine ; and as soon as the boat 
was made fast he concealed himself in the depths of the vessel. 
At the moment of starting, the officer (changed every day to 
avoid recognition) used to present himself and tap the wary 
captain on the shoulder. 

" Let go the line," was his usual reply to the summons. 

The officer, fearing to be carried off to New Jersey, where a 
retaliatory act threatened him with the State's prison, would jump 
ashore as for life ; or, if carried off, would beg to be put ashore. 
In this way, and in many others, the captain contrived to evade 
the law. He fought the State of New York for seven years, 
until, in 1824, Chief Justice Marshall pronounced New York 
wrong and New Jersey right. The opposition vainly attempted 
to buy him off by the offer of a larger boat. 

" No," replied the captain, " I shall stick to Mr. Gibbous till he 
is through his troubles." 



COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 385 

That was the reason why he remained so long in the service 
of Mr. Gibbons- 
After this war was over, the genius of Captain Vanderbilt had 
full play, and he conducted the line with so much energy and 
good sense, that it yielded an annual profit of forty thousand 
dollars. Gibbons offered to raise his salary to five thousand 
dollars a year, but he declined the offer. An acquaintance once 
asked him why he refused a compensation that was so manifestly 
just. 

" I did it on principle," was his reply. " The other captains 
had but one thousand, and they were already jealous enough of 
me. Besides, I never cared for money. All I ever have cared 
for was to carry my point." 

A little incident of these years he has sometimes related to his 
children. In the cold January of 1820, the ship Elizabeth — the 
first ship ever sent to Africa by the Colonization Society — lay at 
the foot of Rector Street, with the negroes all on board, frozen in. 
For many days, her crew, aided by the crew of the frigate Siam, 
her convoy, had been cutting away at the ice ; but, as more ice 
formed at night than could be removed by day, the prospect of 
getting to sea was unpromising. One afternoon. Captain Vander- 
bilt joined the crowd of spectators. 

" They are going the wrong way to work," he carelessly re- 
marked, as he turned to go home. " I could get her out in one 
day." 

These words, from a man who was known to mean all he said, 
made an impression on a bystander, who reported them to the 
anxious agent of the Society. The agent called upon him. 

" What did you mean, Captain, by saying that you could get 
out the ship in one day ? " 

" Just what I said." 

" AYhat will you get her out for ? " 

" One hundred dollars." 

" I '11 give it. When will you do it ? " 

" Have a steamer to-morrow, at twelve o'clock, ready to tow 
her out. I '11 have her clear in time." 

That same evening, at six, he was on the spot with five men, 

17 Y 



886 CO:\IMODORE vanderbilt. 

three pine boards, and a small anchor. The difficulty was that 
beyond the ship there were two hundred yards of ice too thin to 
bear a man. The captain placed his anchor on one of his 
boards, and pushed it out as far as he could reach ; then placed 
another board upon the ice, laid down upon it, and gave his an- 
chor another push. Then he put down his third board, and used 
that as a means of propulsion. In this way he worked forward to 
near the edge of the thin ice, where the anchor broke through 
and sunk. With the line attached to it, he hauled a boat to the 
outer edge, and then began cutting a passage for the ship. 

At eleven the next morning she was clear. At twelve she was 
towed into the stream. 

In 1829, after twelve years of service as captain of a steam- 
boat, being then thirty-five years of age, and having saved thirty 
thousand dollars, he announced to his employer his intention to 
set up for himself. Mr. Gibbons was aghast. He declared that 
he could not carry on the line without his aid, and finding him 
resolute, said : — 

" There, Vanderbilt, take all this property, and pay me for it 
as you make the money." 

This splendid offer he thankfully but firmly declined. He did 
so chiefly because he knew the men with whom he would have 
had to co-operate, and foresaw, that he and they could never 
work comfortably together. He wanted a free field. 

The little Caroline, seventy feet long, that afterward plunged 
over Niagara Falls, was the first steamboat ever built by him. 
His progress as a steamboat owner was not rapid for some years. 
The business was in the hands of powerful companies and 
wealthy individuals, and he, the new-comer, running a few small 
boats on short routes, labored under serious disadvantages. 
Formidable attempts were made to run him off the river; but, 
prompt to retaliate, he made vigorous inroads into the enemy's 
domain, and kept up an opposition so keen as to compel a com- 
promise in every instance. There was a time, during his famous 
contest with the Messrs. Stevens of Hoboken, when he had spent 
every dollar he possessed, and when a few days more of opposi- 
tion would have compelled him to give up the strife. Nothing 



COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 387 

saved him but the belief, on the part of his antagonists, that 
Gibbons was backing him. It was not the case; he had no 
backer. But this error, in the very nick of time, induced his 
opponents to treat for a compromise, and he was saved. 

Gradually he made his way to the control of the steamboat in- 
terest. He has owned, in whole or in part, a hundred steam 
vessels. His various opposition lines have permanently reduced 
fares one half. Superintending himself the construction of every 
boat, having a perfect practical knowledge of the business in its 
every detail, selecting his captains well and paying them justly, he 
has never lost a vessel by fire, explosion, or wreck. He possesses, 
in a remarkable degree, the talent of selecting the right man 
for a place, and of inspiring him with zeal. Eveiy man who 
serves him knows that he will be sustained against all intrigue 
and all opposition, and that he has nothing to feai" so long as he 
does his duty. 

The later events in his career are, in some degree, known to 
the public. Every one remembers his magnificent craise in the 
North Star, and how, on returning to our harbor, his first salute 
was to the cottage of his venerable mother on the Staten Island 
shore. To her, also, on landing, he first paid his respects. 
Every one knows that he presented to the government the 
steamer that bears his name, at a time when she was earning him 
two thousand dollars a day. He has given to the war something 
more precious than a ship : his youngest son. Captain Vander- 
bilt, the most athletic youth that ever graduated at West Point, 
and one of the finest young men in the country. His friends tell 
us that, on his twenty-second birthday he lifted nine hundred and 
eight pounds. But his giant strength did not save him. The 
fatigues and miasmas of the Corinth campaign planted in his 
magnificent frame the seeds of death. He died a year ago, after^.a 
long struggle with disease, to the inexpressible grief of his family. 

During the last two or three years. Commodore Vanderbilt has 
been withdrawing his capital from steamers and investing it in 
railroads. It is this fact that has given rise to the impression 
that he has been playing a deep game in stock speculation. 
No such thing. He has Jiever speculated; he disapproves of, 



388 COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 

and clesjiises speculation ; and has invariably warned his sons 
against it as the pursuit of adventurers and gamblers. " Why, 
then," Wall Street may ask, " has he bought almost the whole 
stock of the Harlem railroad, which pays no dividends, run- 
ning it up to prices that seem ridiculous ? " "We can answer 
this question very simply : he bought the Harlem railroad to 
heep. He bought it as an investment. Looking several inches 
beyond his nose, and several days ahead of to-day, he deliberately 
concluded that the Harlem road, managed as he could manage it, 
would be, in the course of time, what Wall Street itself would call 
"a good thing." We shall see, by and by, whether he judged 
correctly. What was the New Jersey railroad worth when he 
and a few friends went over one day and bought it at auction ? 
Less than nothing. The stock is now held at one hundred and 
seventy-five. 

After taking the cream of the steamboat business for a quarter 
of a century. Commodore Vanderbilt has now become the largest 
holder of railroad stock in the country. If to-morrow balloons 
should supersede railroads, we should doubtless find him " in " 
balloons. 

Nothing is more remarkable than the ease with which great 
business men conduct the most extensive and complicated affairs. 
At ten or eleven in the morning, the Commodore rides from his 
mansion in Washington Place in a light wagon, drawn by one of 
his favorite horses, to his ofiice in Bowling Green, where, in two 
hours, aided by a single clerk, he transacts the business of the 
day, returning early in the afternoon to take his drive on the 
road. He despises show and ostentation in every form. No 
lackey attends him ; he holds the reins himself. With an estate 
of forty millions to manage, nearly all actively employed in iron 
works and railroads, he keeps scarcely any books, but carries all 
his affairs in his head, and manages them without the least anxi- 
ety or apparent effort. 

We are informed by on& who knows him better almost than 
any one else, that he owes his excellent health chiefly to his love 
of horses. He possesses the power of leaving his business in his 
office, and never thinking of it during his hours of recreation. 



1 



COMMODORE VANDERBILT. 389 

Out on the road behind a fast team, or seated at whist at the 
Club-House, he enters gayly into the humors of the hour. He is 
rigid on one point only ; — not to talk or hear of business out of 
business hours. 

Being asked one day what he considered to be the secret of 
success in business, he replied : — 

" Seci'et ? There is no secret about it. All you have to do is 
to attend to your business and go ahead." 

With all deference to such an eminent authority, we must be 
allowed to think that that is not the whole of the matter. Three 
things seem essential to success in business : 1. To hiow your 
business. 2. To attend to it. 3. To keep down expenses until 
your fortune is safe from business perils. 

On another occasion he replied with more point to a similar 
question : — 

" The secret of my success is this : I never tell what I am 
going to do till I have done it." 

He is, indeed, a man of little speech. Gen. Grant himself is 
not more averse to oratory than he. Once, in London, at a 
banquet, his health was given, and he was urged to respond. 
All that could be extorted from him was the following : — 

" Gentlemen, I have never made a fool of myself in my life, 
and I am not going to begin now. Here is a friend of mine (his 
lawyer) who can talk all day. He will do my speaking." 

Nevertheless, he knows how to express his meaning with sin- 
gular clearness, force, and brevity, both by the tongue and by the 
pen. Some of his business letters, dictated by him to a clerk, are 
models of that kind of composition. He is also master of an art 
still more difficult, — that of not saying what he does not wish to 
say. 

As a business man he is even more prudent than he is bold. 
He has sometimes remarked, that it has never been in the power 
of any man or set of men to prevent his keeping an engagement. 
If, for example, he should bind hinjpelf to pay a million of dollars 
on the first of May, he would at once provide for fulfilling his en- 
gagement in such a manner that no failure on the part of others, 
no contingency, private or public, could prevent his doing it. In 



390 COMMODORE ' VANDERBILT. 

other words, he would have the money where he could be sure 
of finding it on the day. 

No one ever sees the name of Cornelius Vanderbilt on a sub- 
scription paper, nor ever will. In his charities, which are numer- 
ous and liberal, he exhibits the reticence which marks his con- 
duct as a man of business. His object is to render real and per- 
manent service to deserving objects ; but to the host of miscella- 
neous beggars that pervade our jilaces of business he is not acces- 
sible. The last years of many a good old soul, whom he knew 
in his youth, have been made happy by a pension from him. But 
of all this not a syllable ever escapes his lips. 

He has now nearly completed his seventy-first year. His 
frame is still erect and vigorous ; and, as a business man, he has 
not a living superior. Every kind of success has attended him 
through life. Thirteen children have been born to him, — nine 
daughters and four sons, — nearly all of whom are living and are 
parents. One of his grandsons has recently come of age. At the 
celebration of his golden wedding, three years ago, more than a 
hundred and forty of his descendants and relations assembled at 
his house. On that joyful occasion, the Commodore presented to 
his wife a beautiful little golden steamboat, with musical works in- 
stead of an engine, — emblematic at once of his business career 
and the harmony of his home. If ever he boasts of anything ap- 
pertaining to him, it is when he is speaking of the manly virtues 
of his son lost in the war, or when he says that his wife is the 
finest woman of her age in the city. 

Commodore Vanderbilt is one of the New World's stronsr men. 
His career is one which young men who aspire to lead in practi- 
cal affairs may study with profit. 



THEODOSIA BURR. 



N' 



THEODOSIA BURR. 



EW YORK does well to celebrate the anniversary of the 
^^^ day when the British troops evacuated the city; for it was 
in truth the birthday of all that we now mean by the City ol 
New York. One hundred and seventy-four years had elapsed 
since Hendrick Hudson landed upon the shores of Manhattan ; 
but the town could only boast a population of twenty-three thou- 
sand. In ten years the population doubled ; in twenty years 
trebled. "Washington Irving was a baby seven months old, at his 
father's house in "William Street, on Evacuation Day, the 25th of 
November, 1783. On coming of age he found himself the inhabi- 
tant of a city containing a population of seventy thousand. Wlien 
he died, at the age of seventy -five, more than a million of people 
inhabited the congregation of cities which form the metropolis of 
America. 

The beginnings of great things are always interesting to us. 
New-Yorkers, at least, cannot read without emotion the plain, 
matter-of-fact accounts in the old newspapers of the manner in 
which the city of their pride changed masters. Journalism has 
altered its modes of procedure since that memorable day. No 
array of headings in large type called the attention of readers to 
the details of this great event in the history of their town, and no 
editorial article in extra leads commented upon it. The news- 
papers printed the merest programme of the proceedings, with 
scarcely a comment of their own ; and, having done that, they 
felt that their duty was done, for no subsequent issue contains an 
allusion to the subject. Perhaps the reader will be gratified by 
a perusal of the account of the evacuation as given in Rivington's 
Gazette of November 26, 1783. 
17* 



oQ-i THEODOSIA BURR. 



New York, November 2G : — Yesterday in tlie Morning the American 
Trooi^s marched from Haerlem, to the Bowery-Lane — They remained 
there until about One o'Clock, when the British Troops left the Posts 
in the Bowery, and the American Troops marched into and took Pos- 
session of the City, in the following Order, viz. 

1. A Corps of Dragoons. 

2. Advance Guard of Light Infantry. 

3. A Corps of Artillery. 

4. Battalion of Light Infantry. 

5. Battalion of Massachusetts Troops. 

6. Rear Guard. 

After the Troops had taken Possession of the City, the General 
[Washington] and Governor [George Clinton] made their Public 
Entry in the following Manner : 

1. Their Excellencies the General and Governor, with their Suites, 
on Horseback. 

2. The Lieutenant-Governor, and the Members of the Council, for 
the Temporary Government of the Southern District, four a-breast. 

3. Major General Knox, and the Officers of the Army, eight a-breast. 

4. Citizens on Horseback, eight a-breast. 

5. The Speaker of the Assembly, and • Citizens, on Foot, eight ar 
breast. 

Their Excellencies the Governor and Commander in Chief were es- 
corted by a Body of West- Chester Light Horse, under the command 
of Captain Delavan. 

The Procession proceeded down Queen Street [now Pearl], and 
through the Broadway, to Cape's Tavern. 

The Governor gave a public Dinner at Fraunces's Tavern; at 
which the Commander in Chief and other General Officei-s were pres- 
ent. 

After Dinner, the following Toasts were drank by the Company : 

1. The United States of America. 

2. His most Christian Majesty. 

3. The United Netherlands. 

4. The king of Sweden. 

5. The American Army. 

6. The Fleet and Ai-mies of France, which have served in America. 

7. The Memory of those Heroes who have fallen for our Freedom. 

8. May our Country be grateful to her military children. 

9. May Justice support what Courage has gained. 

10. The Vindicators of the Rights of Mankind in every Quarter of 
the Globe. 



THEODOSIA BURR.- 395 

11. May America be an Asylum to the persecuted of the Eai-th. 

12. May a close Union of the States guard the Temple they have 
erected to Liberty. 

13. May the Remembrance of This DAY be a Lesson to Princes. 
The arrangement and whole conduct of this march, with the tran- 

quiUity which succeeded it, through the day and night, was admirable ! 
and the grateful citizens will ever feel the most affectionate impressions, 
from that elegant and efficient disposition which prevailed through the 
whole event. 

Such was the journalism of that primitive day. The sedate 
Rivington, for so many years the Tory organ, was in no humor, 
we may suppose, to chronicle the minor events of the occasion, 
even if he had not considered them beneath the dignity of his 
vocation. He says nothing of the valiant matron in Chatham 
Row who, in the impatience of her patriotism, hoisted the Ameri- 
can flag over her door two hours before the stipulated moment, 
noon, and defended it against a British provost oiScer with her 
broomstick. Nor does he allude to the gi-eat scene at the princi- 
pal flag-staiF, which the retiring garrison had plentifully greased, 
and from which they had removed the blocks and halyards, in 
order to retard the hoisting of the stars and stripes. He does 
not tell us how a sailor-boy, with a line around his waist and a 
pocket full of spikes, hammered his way to the top of the staff, 
and restored the tackling by which the flag was flung to the 
breeze before the barges containing the British rear-guard had 
reached the fleet. It was a sad day for Mr. Rivington, and he 
may be excused for not dwelling upon its incidents longer than 
stern duty demanded. 

The whole State of New York had been waiting impatiently 
for the evacuation of the City. Many hundreds of the old Whig 
inhabitants, who had fled at the entrance of the English troops 
seven years before, were eager to come again into possession of 
their homes and property, and resume their former occupations. 
Many new enterprises waited only for the departure of the troops 
to be entered upon. A large number of young men were look- 
ing to New York as the scene of their future career. Albany, 
which had served as the temporary capital of the State, was full 



396 THEODOSIA BURR. 

of lawyers, law-students, retired soldier?, merchants, and meclian- 
ics, who were prepared to remove to New York as soon as Riv- 
ington's Gazette should inform them that the British had really 
left, and General Washington taken possession. As in these 
days certain promises to pay are to be fulfilled six months after 
the United States shall have acknowledged the independence of 
a certain Confederacy, so at that time it was a custom for leases 
and other compacts to be dated from " the day on which the Brit- 
ish troops shall leave New York." Among the young men in 
Albany who were intending to repair to the city were two retired 
officers of distinction, Alexander Hamilton, a student at law, 
and Aaron Burr, then in the second year of his practice at the 
bar. James Kent and Edward Livingston were also stu- 
dents of law in Albany at that time. The old Tory lawyers be- 
ing all exiled or silenced, there was a promising field in New 
York for young advocates of talent, and these two young gentle- 
men had both contracted marriages Avhich nece.-sitated speedy 
l^rofessional gains. Hamilton had won the daughter of General 
Schuyler. Burr was married to the widow of a British officer, 
■whose fortune was a few hundred pounds and two fine strapping 
boys fourteen and sixteen years of age. 

And Burr was himself a father. Theodosia, " his only child," 
was born at Albany in the spring of 1783. When the family re- 
moved to New York in the following winter, and took up their 
abode in Maiden Lane, — " the rent to commence when the troops 
leave the city, " — she was an engaging infant of seven or eight 
months. We may infer something of the cii'cumstances and 
prospects of her father, when we know that he had ventured upon 
a house of which the rent was two hundred pounds a year. We 
find him removing, a year or two after, to a mansion at the cor- 
ner of Cedar and Nassau streets, the garden and grapery of which 
were among the finest in the thickly settled portion of the city. 
Fifty years after, he had still an office within a very few yards of 
the same spot, though all trace of the garden of Theodosia's child- 
hood had l(5ng ago disappeared. She was a child of affluence. 
Not till she had left her father's house did a shadow of misfor- 
tune darken its portals. Abundance and elegance surrounded 



THEODOSIA BUEE. 397 

her from her infancy, and whatever advantages in education and 
training wealth can produce for a child she had in profusion. At 
the same time her father's vigilant stoicism guarded her from the 
evils attendant upon a too easy acquisition of things pleasant and 
desirable. 

She was born into a happy home. Even if we had not the 
means of knowing something of the character of her mother, we 
might still infer that she must have possessed qualities singularly 
attractive to induce a man in the position of Burr to undertake 
the charge of a family at the outset of his career. She was 
neither handsome nor young, nor had she even the advantage of 
good health. A scar disfigured her face. Burr, — the brilliant 
and celebrated Burr, — heir of an honored name, had linked his 
rising fortunes with an invalid and her boys. The event most 
abundantly justified his choice, for in all the fair island of Man- 
hattan there was not a happier family than his, nor one in which 
happiness was more securely founded in the diligent discharge of 
duty. The twelve years of his married life w'ere his brightest 
and best ; and among the last words he ever spoke were a pointed 
declaration that his wife was the best woman and the finest lady 
he had ever known. It was her cultivated mind that drew him 
to her. "It was a knowledge of your mind," he once wrote her, 
"which first inspired me with a respect for that of your se;., 
and with some regret I confess, that the ideas you have often 
heard me express in favor of female intellectual power are founded 
in what I have imagined more than in what I have seen, except 
in you." 

In those days an educated woman was among the rarest of 
rarities. The wives of many of our most renowned revolutionary 
leaders were surprisingly illiterate. Except the noble wife of 
John Adams, whose letters form so agreeable an oasis in the pub- 
lished correspondence of the time, it would be difficult to men 
tion the name of one lady of the revolutionary period who could 
have been a companion to the mind of a man of culture. Mrs. 
Burr, on the contrary, was the equal of her husband in literary 
discei'nment, and his superior in moral judgment. Her remarks, 
in her letters to her husband, upon the popular authors of the 



398 THEODOSIA BURK. 

day, Chesterfield, Rousseau, Voltaire, and others, show that she 
could correct as well as sympathize with her husband's taste. 
She relished all of Chesterfield except the " indulgence," which 
Eurr thought essential. She had a weakness for Rousseau, but 
was not deluded by his sentimentality. She enjoyed Gibbon 
without stumbling at his fifteentli and sixteenth chapters. 

The home of Theodosia presents to us a pleasing scene of vir- 
tuous industry. The master of the liouse, always an indomitable 
worker, was in the full tide of a successful career at the bar. 
His two step-sons were employed in his office, and one of them 
frequently accompanied him in his journeys to distant courts as 
clerk or amanuensis. No father could have been more generous 
or more thoughtful than he was for these fatherless youths, and 
they appeared to have cherished for him the liveliest affection. 
Mrs. Burr shared in the labors of the office during the absence 
of her lord. All the affiiirs of this happy family moved in har- 
mony, for love presided at their board, inspired their exertions, 
and made them one. One circumstance alone interrupted their 
felicity, and that was the frequent absence of Burr from home on 
business at country courts ; but even these journeys served to 
call forth from all the family the warmest effusions of affection. 

" What language can express the joy, the gratitude of Theodosia ! " 
writes Mrs. Burr to her absent husband, in the fifth year of their mar- 
riage. " Stage after stage without a line. Thy usual punctuality gave 
room for every fear ; various conjectures filled every breast. One of 
our sons was to have departed to-day in quest of the best of friends 
and fathers. This morning we waited the stage with impatience. 
Shrouder went frequently before it arrived ; at length returned — no 
letter. We were struck dumb with disappointment. Barton [eldest 
son] set out to inquire who were the passengers ; in a very few minutes 
returned exulting — a packet worth the treasures of the universe. 
Joy brightened every face ; all expressed their past anxieties, their 
present happiness. To enjoy was the first result. Each made choice 
of what they could best relish. Porter, sweet wine, chocolate, and 
sweetmeats made the most delightful repast that could be enjoyed 
without thee. The servants were made to feel their lord was well ; are 
at this instant toasting his health and bounty. While the boys are 
obeying thy dear commands, thy Theodosia flies to speak her heartfelt 



THEODOSIA BURPv. 399 

joy — her Aaron safe — mistress of the heart she adores, can she ask 
more ? Has Heaven more to grant ? " 

What a iDleasing picture of a happy family circle is this, and 
how rarely are the perils of a second marriage so completely 
overcome ! It was in such a warm and pleasant nest as this that 
Theodosia Burr passed the years of her childhood. 

Charles Lamb used to say that babies had no right to our regard 
merely as babies, but that every child had a character of its own 
by which it must stand or fall in the esteem of disinterested ob- 
servers. Theodosia was a beautiful and forward child, formed to 
be the pet and pride of a household. " Your dear little Theo," 
wrote her mother in her third year, " grows the most engaging 
child you ever saw. It is impossible to see her with indifference." 
From her earliest years she exhibited that singular fondness for 
her father which afterward became the ruling passion of her life, 
and which was to undergo the severest tests that filial affection 
has ever known. When she was but three years of age her moth- 
er would write: "Your dear little daughter seeks you twenty 
times a day ; calls you to your meals, and will not suffer your 
chair to be filled by any of the family." And again : " Your 
dear little Theodosia cannot hear you spoken of without an ap- 
parent melancholy ; insomuch that her nurse is obliged to exert 
her invention to divert her, and myself avoid to mention you in 
her presence. She was one whole day indifferent to everything 
but your name. Her attachment is not of a common nature." 

Here was an inviting opportunity for developing an engaging 
infant into that monstrous thing, a spoiled child. She was an 
only daughter in a family of which all the members but herself 
were adults, and the head of which was among the busiest of men. 

But Aaron Burr, amidst all the toils of his profession, and in 
spite of the distractions of political strife, made the education of 
his daughter the darling object of his existence. Hunters tell us 
that pointers and hounds inherit the instinct which renders them 
such valuable allies in the pursuit of game ; so that the offspring 
of a trained dog acquires the arts of the chase with very little in- 
struction. Burr's father was one of the most zealous and skilful 
of schoolmasters, and from him he appears to have derived that 



400 THEODOSIA BUER. 

pedagogic cast of character which led hira, all his life, to take so 
much interest in the training of proteges. There was never a 
time in his whole career when he had not some youth upon his 
hands to whose education he was devoted. His system of train- 
ing, with many excellent points, was radically defective. Its de- 
fects are sufficiently indicated when we say that it was pagan, 
not Christian. Plato, Socrates, Cato, and Cicero might have 
pronounced it good and sufficient: St. John, St. Augustine, and 
all the Christian host would have lamented it as fatally defective. 
But if Burr educated his child as though she were a Roman girl, 
her mother was with her during the first eleven years of her life, 
to supply, in some degree, what was wanting in the instructions 
of her father. 

Burr was a stoic. He cultivated hardness. Fortitude and 
fidelity were his favorite virtues. The seal which he used in his 
correspondence with his intimate friends, and with them only, was 
descriptive of his character and prophetic of his destiny. It was 
a Rock, solitary in the midst of a tempestuous ocean, and bore the 
inscription, " Nee jiatu nee jluctu" — neither by wind nor by 
wave. It was his principle to steel himself against the inevitable 
evils of life. If we were asked to select from his writings the 
sentence which contains most of his characteristic way of think- 
ing, it would be one which he wrote in his twenty-fourth year to 
his future wife : " That mind is truly great which can bear with 
equanimity the trifling and unavoidable vexations of life, and be 
affected only by those which determine our substantial bliss." 
He utterly despised all complaining, even of the greatest calam- 
ities. He even experienced a kind of proud pleasure in endur- 
ing the fierce obloquy of his later years. One day, near the 
close of his life, when a friend had told him of some new scandal 
respecting his moral conduct, he said: "That's right, my child, 
tell me what they say. I like to know what the public say of 
me, — the great public ! " Such words he would utter without 
the slightest bitterness, speaking of the great public as a humor- 
ous old grandfather might of a wayward, foolish, good little child. 

So, at the dawn of a career which promised nothing but glory 
and prosperity, surrounded by all the appliances of ease and 



THEODOSIA BUEE. 401 

pleasure, he was solicitous to teach his child to do and to endure. 
He would have her accustomed to sleep alone, and to go about 
the house in the dark. Her breakfast was of bread and milk. 
He was resolute in exacting the less agreeable tasks, such as 
arithmetic. He insisted upon regularity of hours. Upon going 
away upon a journey he would leave written orders for her 
tutors, detailing the employments of each day ; and, during his 
absence, a chief topic of his letters was the lessons of the chil- 
dren. Children, — for, that his Theodo?ia might have the ad- 
vantage of a companion in her studies, he adopted the little Na- 
talie, a French child, whom he reared to womanhood in his 
house. "The letters of our dear children," he would write, 
" are a feast. To hear that they are employed, that no time is 
absolutely wasted, is the most flattering of anything that could 
be told me of them. It insures their affection, or is the best 
evidence of it. It insures in its consequences everything I am 
ambitious of in them. Endeavor to preserve regularity of hours ; 
it conduces exceedingly to industry." And his wife would an- 
swer : " I really believe, my dear, that few parents can boast 
of children whose minds are so prone to virtue. I see the re- 
ward of our assiduity with inexpressible delight, with a gratitude 
few experience. My Aaron, they have grateful hearts." Or 
thus : " Theo [seven years old] ciphers from five in the morning 
until eight, and also the same hours in the evening. This pre- 
vents our riding at those hours." 

When Theodosia was ten years old, Mary Wollstonecraft's 
eloquent little book, " A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," 
fell into Burr's hands. He was so powerfully struck by it that 
he sat up nearly all night reading it. He showed it to all his 
friends. "Is it owing to ignorance or prejudice," he wrote, 
" that I have not yet met a single person who had discovered or 
would allow the merit of this work ? " The work, indeed, was 
fifty years in advance of the time ; for it anticipated all that is 
rational in the opinions respecting the position and education of 
women which are now held by the ladies who are stigmatized as 
the Strong-minded, as well as by John Mill, Herbert Spencer, 
and other economists of the modern school. It demanded fair 



402 THEODOSIA BURR. 

play for the understanding of women. It proclaimed the essen- 
tial equality of the sexes. It denounced the awful libertinism of 
that age, and showed that the weakness, the ignorance, the vanity, 
and the seclusion of women prepared them to become the tool and 
minion of bad men's lust. It criticised ably the educational sys- 
tem of Rousseau, and, with still more severity, the popular works 
of bishops and priests, who chiefly strove to inculcate an abject 
submission to man as the rightful lord of the sex. It demon- 
strated that the sole possibility of woman's elevation to the rank 
of man's equal and friend was in the cultivation of her mind, and 
in the thoughtful discharge of the duties of her lot. It is a really 
noble and brave little book, undeserving of the oblivion into which 
it has fallen. No intelligent woman, no wise parent with daugh- 
ters to rear, could read it now without pleasure and advantage. 

" Meekness," she says, " may excite tenderness, and gratify the ar- 
rogant pride of man ; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not 
gratify a noble mind that pants and deserves to be respected. Fond- 
ness is a poor substitute for friendship A girl whose spirits 

have not been damped by inactivity, or innocence tainted by false 
shame, will always be a romp, and the doll will never excite attention 
unless confinement allows her no alternative Most of the wom- 
en, in the circle of my observation, who have acted like rational 
creatures, have accidentally been allowed to run wild, as some of the 

elegant formers of the fair sex would insinuate Men have better 

tempers than women because they are occupied by pursuits that inter- 
est the liead as well as the heart. I never knew a weak or ignorant 

person who had a good temper Why are girls to be told that they 

resemble angels, but to sink them below women ? They are told that 
they are only like angels when they are young and beautiful ; conse- 
quently it is their persons, not their virtues, that procure them this 

homage It is in vain to attempt to keep the heart pure unless 

the head is furnished with ideas Would ye, O my sisters, 

really possess modesty, ye must remember that the possession of vir- 
tue, of any denomination, is incompatible with ignorance and vanity ! 
Ye must acquire that soberness of mind which the exercise of duties 
and the pursuit of knowledge alone inspire, or ye will still remain in a 
doubtful, dependent situation, and only be loved while ye are fair ! 
The downcast eye, the rosy blush, the retiring grace, are all proper in 
their season ; but modesty being the child of reason cannot long exist 



THEODOSIA BUER. 403 

■with the sensibility that is not tempered by reflection With what 

disgust have I heard sensible women speak of the wearisome confinement 
which they endured at school. Not allowed, perhaps, to step out of 
one broad path in a superb garden, and obliged to pace, with steady 
deportment, stupidly backward and forward, holding up their heads 
and turning out their toes, with shoulders braced back, instead of 
bounding forward, -as Nature directs to complete her own design, in the 
various attitudes so conducive to health. The pure animal spirits, 
which make both mind and body shoot out and unfold the tender blos- 
soms of hope, are turned sour and vented in vain wishes or pert repln- 
ings, that contract the faculties and spoil the temper ; else they mount 
to the brain, and, sharpening the understanding before it gains propor- 
tionable strength, produce that pitiful cunning which disgracefully 
characterizes the female mind, — and, I fear, will ever characterize it 
while women remain the slaves of power." 

In the spirit of this book Theodosia's education -was conducted. 
Her mind had fair play. Her father took it for granted that she 
could learn what a boy of the same age could learn, and gave her 
precisely tlie advantages which he would have given a son. Be- 
sides the usual accomplishments, French, music, dancing, and 
riding, she learned to read Virgil, Horace, Terence, Lucian, Ho- 
mer, in the original. She appears to have read all of Terence 
and Lucian, a great part of Horace, all the Iliad, and large por- 
tions of the Odyssey. " Cursed effects," exclaimed her father 
once, " of fashionable education, of which both sexes are the ad- 
vocates, and yours eminently the victims. If I could foresee that 
Theo would become a mere fashionable woman, with all the 
attendant frivolity and vacuity of mind, adorned with whatever 
grace and allurement, I would earnestly pray God to take her 
forthwith hence. But I yet hope by her to convince the world 
what neither sex appears to believe, that women have souls." 

How faithfully, how skilfully he labored to kindle and nourish 
the intelligence of his child his letters to her attest. He was 
never too busy to spare a half-hour in answering her letters. In 
a country court-room, in the Senate-chamber, he wrote her brief 
and sprightly notes, correcting her spelling, complimenting her 
style, reproving her indolence, praising her industry, commenting 
on her authors. Rigorous taskmaster as he was, he had a strong 



404 THEODOSIA BUER. 

sense of the value of just commendation, and he continued to 
mingle praise very happily with reproof. A few sentences from 
his letters to her will serve to show his manner. 

(In her tenth year.) — "I rose up suddenly from the sofa, and rub- 
bing my head, ' What book shall I buy for her ? ' said I to myself. 
' She reads so much and so rapidly that it is not easy to find proper 
and amusing French books for her ; and yet I am so flattered with her 
progress in that language that I am resolved she shall, at all events, be 
gratified. Indeed I owe it to her.' So, after walking once or twice 
briskly across the floor, I took my hat and sallied out, determined not 
to return till I had purchased something. It was not my first attempt. 
I went into one bookseller's shop after another. I found plenty of 
fairy tales and such nonsense, fit for the generality of children nine or 
ten years old. ' These,' said I, ' will never do. Her understanding 
begins to be above such things ' ; but I could see nothing that I would 
ofier with pleasure to an intelligent, ivell-informed girl nine years old. 
I began to be discouraged. The hour of dining was come. ' But I 
will search a little longer.' I persevered. At last I found it. I found 
the very thing I sought. It is contained in two volumes octavo, hand- 
somely bound, and with prints and registers. It is a work of fancy, 
but replete with instruction and amusement. I must present it with 
my own hand." 

He advised her to keep a diary ; and to give her an idea of 
what she should record, he wrote for her such a journal of one 
dav as he should like to receive. 

Plan of the Journal. — " Learned 230 lines, which finished Horace. 
Heigh-ho for Terence and the Greek Grammar to-morrow. Practised 
two hours less thirty-five minutes, which I begged, oflf. Howlett 
(dancing-master) did not come. Began Gibbon last evening. I find 
he requires as much study and attention as Horace ; so I shall not 
rank the reading of him among amusements. Skated an hour ; fell 
twenty times, and find the advantage of a hard head. Ma better, — 
dined with us at table, and is still sitting up and free from pain." 

She was remiss in keeping her journal ; remiss, too, in writing 
to her father, though he reminded her that he never let one of 
her letters remain unanswered a day. He reproved her sharply. 
*' What ! " said he, " can neither affection nor civility induce you 
to devote to me the small portion of time which I have required ? 



THEODOSIA BURR. 405 

Are authority and compulsion then the only engines by which 
you can be moved ? For shame, Theo. Do not give me reason 
to think so ill of you." 

She reformed. In her twelfth year, her father wrote : " lo 
triumphe ! there is not a word misspelled either in your journal 
or letter, which cannot be said of one you ever wrote before." 
And again : " When you want punctuality in your letters, I am 
sui-e you want it in everything ; for you will constantly observe 
that you have the most leisure when you do the most business. 
Negligence of one's duty produces a self-dissatisfaction which 
unfits the mind for everything, and ennui and peevishness are the 
never-failing consequence." 

His letters abound in sound advice. There is scarcely a pas- 
sage in them which the most scrupulous and considerate parent 
could disapprove. Theodosia heeded well his instructions. She 
became nearly all that his heart or his pride desii'ed. 

During the later years of her childhood, her mother was griev- 
ously afiiicted with a cancer, which caused her death in 1794, 
before Theodosia had completed her twelfth year. From that 
time, such was the precocity of her character, that she became 
the mistress of her father's house and the companion of his leisure 
hours. Continuing her studies, however, we find her in her six- 
teenth year translating French comedies, reading the Odyssey at 
the rate of two hundred lines a day, and about to begin the Iliad. 
" The happiness of my life," writes her father, " depends upon 
your exertions ; for what else, for whom else, do I live ? " And, 
later, when all the world supposed that his whole soul was ab- 
sorbed in getting New York ready to vote for Jefierson and Burr, 
he told her that the ideas of which she was the subject that 
passed daily through his mind would, if committed to writing, fill 
an octavo volume. 

Who so happy as Theodosia ? Who so fortunate ? The 
young ladies of New York, at the close of the last century, might 
have been pardoned for envying the lot of this favorite child of 
one who then seemed the favorite child of fortune. Burr had 
been a Senator of the United States as soon as he had attained 
the age demanded by the Constitution. As a lawyer he was 



406 THEODOSIA BURR. 

second in ability and success to no man ; in reputation, to none 
but Hamilton, whose services in the Cabinet of General Wash- 
ington had given him great celebrity. Aged members of the 
New York bar remember that Burr alone was the antagonist 
who could put Hamilton to his mettle. When other lawyers 
were employed against him, Hamilton's manner was that of a 
man who felt an easy superiority to the demands upon him ; he 
took few notes ; he was playful and careless, relying much upon 
the powerful declamation of his summing up. But when Burr 
was Ln the case, — Burr the wary, the vigilant, who was never 
careless, never inattentive, who came into court only after an 
absolutely exhaustive preparation of his case, who held declama- 
tion in contemjjt, and knew how to quench its effect by a stroke 
of polite satire, or the quiet citation of a fact, — then Hamilton was 
obliged to have all his wits about him, and he was observed to be 
restless, busy, and serious. There are now but two or three 
venerable men among us who remember the keen encounters of 
these two distinguished lawyers. The vividness of their recol- 
lection of those scenes of sixty years ago shows what an impres- 
sion must have been made upon their youthful minds. 

If Hamilton and Burr divided equally between them the 
honors of the bar, Burr had the additional distinction of beins: a 
leader of the rising Democratic Party ; the party to which, at 
that day, the youth, the genius, the sentiment, of the country were 
powerfully drawn ; the party which, by his masterly tactics, was 
about to place Mr. Jefferson in the Presidential chair after ten 
years of ineffectual struggle. 

All this enhanced the eclat of Theodosia's position. As she 
rode about the island on her pony, followed at a respectful dis 
tance, as the custom then was, by one of her father's slaves 
mounted on a coach-horse, doubtless many a fair damsel of the 
city repined at her own homelier lot, while she dwelt upon the 
many advantages which nature and circumstances had bestowed 
upon this gifted and happy maiden. 

She was a beautiful girl. She inherited all her father's refined 
beauty of countenance ; also his shortness of stature ; the dignity, 
grace,, and repose of his incomparable manner, too. She was a 



THEODOSIA BURR. 407 

plump, petite, and rosy girl ; but there was that in her demeanor 
which became the daughter of an affluent home, and a certain 
assured, indescribable expression of face which seemed to say, 
Here is a maiden who to the object of her affection could be 
faithful asainst an execratina: world, — faithful even unto death. 
Burr maintained at that time two establishments, one in the 
city, the other a mile and a half out of town on the banks of the 
Hudson. Richmond Hill was the name of his country seat, 
where Theodosia resided during the later years of her youth. It 
was a large, massive, wooden edifice, with a lofty portico of Ionic 
columns, and stood on a hill facing the river, in the midst of a 
lawn adorned with ancient trees and trained shrubbery. The 
grounds, which extended to the water's edge, comprised about a 
hundred and sixty acres. Those who now visit the site of Burr's 
abode, at the corner of Charlton and Varick streets, behold a 
wilderness of very ordinary houses covering a dead level. The 
hill has been pared away, the ponds filled up, the river pushed 
away a long distance from the ancient shore, and every one of the 
venerable trees is gone. The city shows no spot less suggestive 
of rural beauty. But Richmond Hill, in the days of Hamilton 
and Burr, was the finest country residence on the island of Man- 
hattan. The wife of John Adams, who lived there in 1790, just 
before Burr bought it, and who had recently travelled in the love- 
liest counties of England, speaks of it as a situation not inferior 
vin natural beauty to the most delicious spot she ever saw. "The 
house," she says, " is situated upon an eminence ; at an agreeable 
distance flows the noble Hudson, bearing upon its bosom the 
fruitful productions of the adjacent country. On my right hand 
are fields beautifully variegated with grass and gi'ain, to a great 
extent, like the valley of Honiton, in Devonshire. Upon my left 
the city opens to view, intercepted here and there by a rising 
ground and an ancient oak. In front, beyond the Hudson, the 
Jersey shores present the exuberance of a rich, well-cultivated 
soil. The venerable oaks and broken ground, covered with wild 
shrubs, which surround me, give a natural beauty to the spot, 
which is truly enchanting. A lovely variety of birds serenade 
me morning and evening, rejoicing in their liberty and security ; 



408 THEODOSIA BURR. 

for I have, as much as possible, jDrohibited the grounds from in- 
vasion, and sometimes almost wished for game-laws, when my 
orders have not been sufficiently regarded. The partridge, the 
woodcock, and the pigeon are too great temptations to the sports- 
men to withstand." 

Indeed the whole Island was enchanting in those early days. 
There were pleasant gardens even in Wall Street, Cedar Street, 
Nassau Street ; and the Battery, the place of universal resort, 
was one of the most delightful public grounds in the world, — as 
it will be again when the Spoiler is thrust from the places of 
power, and the citizens of New York come again into the owner- 
ship of their city. The banks of the Hudson and of the East 
River were forest-crowned bluffs, lofty and picturesque, and on 
every favorable site stood a cottage or a mansion surrounded with 
pleasant grounds. The letters of Theodosia Burr contain many 
passages expressive of her intense enjoyment of the variety, the 
vivid verdure, the noble trees, the heights, the pretty lakes, the 
enchanting prospects, the beautiful gardens, which her daily rides 
brought to her view. She was a dear lover of her island home. 
The city had not then laid waste the beauty of Manhattan. 
There was only one bank in New York, the officers of which 
shut the bank at one o'clock and went home to dinner, returned 
at three, and kept the bank open till five. Much of the business 
life of the town partook of this homely, comfortable, easy-going, 
rural spirit. There w^as a mail twice a week to the North, and 
twice a week to the South, and many of the old-fashioned people 
had time to live. 

Not so the younger and newer portion of the population. We 
learn from one of the letters of the ill-fated Blennerhassett, Avho 
arrived in New York from Ireland in 1796, that the people were 
so busy there in making new docks, filling in the swamps, and 
digging cellars for new buildings, as to .bring on an epidemic fever 
and ague that drove him from the city to the Jersey shore. He 
mentions, also, that land in the State doubled in value every two 
years, and that commercial speculation was carried on with such 
avidity that it was more like gambling than trade. It is he that 
relates the story of the adventurer, who, on learning that the yel- 



THEODOSIA BURR. 409 

low-fever prevailed fearfully in the West Indies, sent thither 
a cargo of coffins in nests, and, that no room might be lost, 
filled the smallest with gingerbread. The speculation, he assures 
us, was a capital hit ; for the adventurer not only sold his coffins 
very profitably, but loaded his vessel with valuable woods, which 
yielded a great profit at New York. At that time, also, the 
speculation in lots, corner lots, and lands near the city, was prose- 
cuted with all the recklessness which we have been in the habit 
of supposing was peculiar to later times. New York was New 
York even in the days of Burr and Hamilton. 

As mistress of Richmond Hill, Theodosia entertained distin- 
guished company. Hamilton was -her father's occasional guest. 
Burr preferred the society of educated Frenchmen and French- 
women to any other, and he entertained many distinguished ex- 
iles of the French Revolution. Talleyrand, Volney, Jerome 
Bonaparte, and Louis Philippe were among his guests. Colonel 
Stone mentions, in his Life of Brant, that Theodosia, in her four- 
teenth year, in the absence of her father, gave a dinner to that 
chieftain of the forest, which was attended by the Bishop of New 
York, Dr. Hosack, Volney, and several other guests of distinction, 
who greatly enjoyed the occasion. Burr was gratified to hear 
with how much grace and good-nature his daughter acquitted 
herself in the entertainment of her company. The chief himself 
was exceedingly dehghted, and spoke of the dinner with great 
animation many years after. 

We have one pleasant glimpse of Theodosia in these happy 
years, in a trifling anecdote preserved by the biographer of Ed- 
ward Livingston, during whose mayoralty the present City Hall 
was begun. The mayor had the pleasure, one bright day, of 
escorting the young lady on board a French frigate lying in the 
harbor. " You must bring none of your sparks on board, Theo- 
dosia," exclaimed the pun-loving magistrate ; " for they have a 
magazine here, and we shall all be blown up." Oblivion here 
drops the curtain upon the gay party and the brilliant scene. 

A suitor appeared for the hand of this fair and accomplished 
girl. It was Joseph Alston of South Carolina, a gentleman of 
twenty-two, possessor of large estates in rice plantations and 
18 



410 THEODOSIA BURR. 

slaves, and a man of much spirit and talent. He valued his 
estates at two hundred thousand pounds sterlmg. Their court- 
ship was not a long one ; for though she, as became her sex, 
checked the impetuosity of his advances and argued for delay, she 
was easily convinced by the reasons which he adduced for haste. 
She reminded him that Aristotle was of opinion that a man 
should not marry till he was thirty-six. "A fig for Aristotle," he 
replied ; " let us regard the ipse dixit of no man. It is only want 
of fortune or want of discretion," he continued, " that could justify 
such a postponement of mai-ried joys. But suppose," he added, 
" (nierely for instance,) a young man nearly two-and-twenty, 
already of the greatest discretion, with an ample fortune, were to 
be passionately in love with a young lady almost eighteen, equally 
discreet with himself, and who had a ' sincere friendship ' for him, 
do you think it would be necessary to make him wait till thirty ? 
particularly where the friends on both sides were pleased with 
the match." 

She told him, also, that some of her friends who had visited 
Charleston had described it as a city where the yellow-fever and 
the " yells of whipped negroes, which assail your ears from every 
house," and the extreme heat, rendered life a mere purgatory. 
She had heard, too, that in South Carolina the men were ab- 
sorbed in hunting, gaming, and racing ; while the women, robbed 
of their society, had no pleasures but to come together in large 
parties, sip tea, and look prim. The ardent swain eloquently de- 
fended his native State : — 

" What ! " he exclaimed, " Is Charleston, the most delightfully situ- 
ated city in America, which, entirely open to the ocean, twice in every 
twenty-four hours is cooled by the refreshing sea-breeze, the Montpel- 
ier of the South, which annually aiTords an asylum to the planter and 
the West Indian from every disease, accused of heat and unhealthi- 
ness ? But this is not all, unfortunate citizens of Charleston ; the 
scream, the yell of the miserable unresisting African, bleeding under 
the scourge of relentless power, affords music to your ears ! Ah ! from 
what unfriendly cause does this arise ? Has the God of heaven, In 
anger, here changed the order of nature? In every other region, 
without exception, in a similar degree of latitude, the same sun which 
ripens the tamarind and the anana, amehorates the temper, and dis- 



THEODOSIA BUKR. 411 

poses it to gentleness and kindness. In India and other countries, not 
very diSerent in climate from the southern parts of the United States, 
the inhabitants are distinguished for a softness and inoffensiveness of 
manners, degenerating almost to effeminacy ; it is here then, only, 
that we are exempt from the general influence of climate : here only 
that, in spite of it, we are cruel and ferocious ! Poor Carolina ! " 

And with regard to the manners of the Carolinians he assured 
the young lady that if there was one State in the Union which 
could justly claim superiority to the rest, in social refinement and 
the art of elegant living, it was South Carolina, where the divi- 
sion of the people into the very poor and the very rich left to the 
latter class abundant leisure for the pursuit of literature and the 
enjoyment of society. 

" The possession of slaves," he owns, " renders them proud, impa- 
tient of restraint, and gives them a haughtiness of manner which, to 
those unaccustomed to them, is disagreeable ; but we find among them 
a high sense of honor, a delicacy of sentiment, and a liberality of mind, 
which we look for in vain in the more commercial citizens of the 
Northern States. The genius of the Carolinian, like the inhabitants 
of all southern countries, is quick, lively, and acute ; in steadiness and 
perseverance he is naturally inferior to the native of the North ; but 
this defect of climate is often overcome by his ambition or necessity ; 
and, whenever this happens, he seldom fails to distinguish himself In 
his temper he is gay and fond of company, open, generous, and unsus- 
picious ; easily irritated, and quick to resent even the appearance of 
insult ; but his passion, like the fire of the flint, is hghted up and ex- 
tinguished in the same moment." 

Such discussions end only in one way. Theodosia yielded the 
points in dispute. At Albany, on the 2d of February, 1801, 
while the country was ringing with the names of Jefferson and 
Burr, and while the world supposed that Burr was intriguing 
with all his might to defeat the wishes of the people by securing 
his own election to the Presidency, his daughter was married. 
The marriage was thus announced in the New York Commercial 
Advertiser of February 7 : — 

" MARRIED. — At Albany, on the 2d instant, by the Rev. IVlr. 
JoHNsox, Joseph Alston, of South CaroUna, to Theodosia Bukr, 
only child of Aakon Bukr, Esq." 



412 THEODOSIA BURR. 

They were married at Albany, because Colonel Burr, being a 
member of the Legislature, was residing at the capital of the 
State. One week the happy pair passed at Albany. Then to 
New York ; whence, after a few days' stay, they began their 
long journey southward. Rejoined at Baltimore by Colonel 
Burr, they travelled in company to "Washington, where, on the 
4th of March, Theodosia witnessed the inauguration of Mr. Jef- 
ferson, and the induction of her father into the Vice-Presidency. 
Father and child parted a day or two after the ceremony. The 
only solid consolation, he said in his first letter to her, that he had 
for the loss of her dear companionship, was a belief that she 
would be happy, and the certainty that they should often meet. 
And, on his return to New York, he told her that he had ap- 
proached his home as he would " the sepulchre of all his friends." 
" Dreary, solitary, comfortless. It was no longer home." Hence 
his various schemes of a second marriage, to which Theodosia 
urged him. He soon had the comfort of hearing that the recep- 
tion of his daughter in South Carolina was as cordial and affec- 
tionate as his heart could have wished. 

Theodosia now enjoyed three as happy years as ever fell to the 
lot of a young wife. Tenderly cherished by her husband, whom 
she devotedly loved, caressed by society, surrounded by affection- 
ate and admiring relations, provided bountifully with all the 
means of enjoyment, living in the summer in the mountains of 
Carolina, or at the home of her childhood, Richmond Hill, pass- 
ing the winters in gay and luxurious Charleston, honored for her 
own sake, for her father's, and her husband's, the years glided 
rapidly by, and she seemed destined to remain to the last For- 
tune's favorite child. One summer she and her husband visited 
Niagara, and penetrated the domain of the chieftain Brant, who 
gave them royal entertainment. Once she had the great happi- 
ness of receiving her father under her own roof, and of seeing 
the honors paid by the people of the State to the Vice-President. 
Again she spent a summer at Richmond Hill and Saratoga, leav- 
ing her husband for the first time. She told him on this occasion 
that every tooman must prefer the society of the North to that 
of the South, whatever she might say. " If she denies it, she is 



THEODOSIA BUKR. 413 

set down in my mind as insincere and weakly prejudiced." But, 
like a fond and loyal wife, she wrote, " Where you are, there is 
my country, and in you are centred all my wishes." 

She was a mother too. That engaging and promising boy, 
Aaron Burr Alston, the delight of his parents and of his grand- 
father, was born in the second year of the marriage. This event 
seemed to complete her happiness. For a time, it is true, she 
paid dearly for it by the loss of her former robust and joyous 
health. But the boy was w^orth the price. " If I can see with- 
out prejudice," wrote Colonel Burr, " there never was a finer 
boy " ; and the mother's letters are full of those sweet, trifling 
anecdotes which mothers love to relate of their offspring. Her 
father still urged her to improve her mind, for her own and her 
son's sake, telling her that all she could learn would necessarily 
find its way to the mind of the boy. " Bray take in hand," he 
v/rites, "some book which requires attention and study. You 
will, I fear, lose the habit of study, which would be a greater mis- 
fortune than to lose your head." He praised, too, the ease, good- 
■ sense, and sprightliness of her letters, and said truly that her 
style, at its best, was not inferior to that of Madame de Sevign^. 
Life is frequently styled a checkered scene. But it was the 
peculiar lot of Theodosia to experience during the first twenty- 
one years of her life nothing but prosperity and happiness, and 
during the remainder of her existence nothing but misfortune 
and sorrow. Never had her father's position seemed so strong 
and enviable as during his tenure of the ofiice of Vice-President ; 
but never had it been in reality so hollow and precarious. Hold- 
ing property valued at two hundred thousand dollars, he was so 
deeply in debt that nothing but the sacrifice of his landed estate 
could save him from bankruptcy. At the age of thirty he had 
permitted himself to be drawn from a lucrative and always in- 
creasing professional business to the fascinating but most costly 
pursuit of political honors. And now, when he stood at a distance 
of only one step from the highest place, he was pursued by a 
clamorous host of creditors, and compelled to resort to a hundred 
expedients to maintain the expensive establishments supposed to 
be necessary to a Vice-President's dignity. His political posi- 



414 THEODOSIA BURR. 

tion was as hollow as his social eminence. Mr. Jefferson was 
fii'mly resolved that Aaron Burr should not be his successor; 
and the great families of New York, whom Burr had united to 
win the victory over Federalism, were now united to bar the 
further advancement of a man whom they chose to regard as an 
interloper and a parvenu. If Burr's private life had been stain- 
less, if his fortune had been secure, if he had been in his heart a 
Republican and a Democrat, if he had been a man earnest in the 
people's cause, if even his talents had been as superior as they 
were supposed to be, such a combination of powerful families and 
political influence might have retarded, but could not have pre- 
vented, his advancement; for he was still in the prime of his 
prime, and the people naturally side with a man who is the archi- 
tect of his own fortunes. 

On the 1st of July, 1804, Burr sat in the library of Richmond 
Hill writing to Theodosia. The day was unseasonably cold, and 
a fire blazed upon the hearth. The lord of the mansion was 
chilly and serious. An hour before he had taken the step which 
made the duel with Hamilton inevitable, though eleven days 
were to elapse before the actual encounter. He was tempted to 
prepare the mind of his child for the event, but he forebore. 
Probably his mind had been wandering into the past, and recall- 
ing his boyhood ; for he quoted a line of poetry which he had 
been wont to use in those early days. " Some very wise man has 
said," he wrote, 

" ' Oh, fools, who think it solitude to be alone ! ' 

This is but poetry. Let us, therefore, drop the subject, lest it 
lead to another, on which I have imposed silence on myself." 
Then he proceeds, in his usual gay and agreeable manner, again 
urging her to go on in the pursuit of knowledge. His last 
thoughts before going to the field were with her and for her. 
His last request to her husband was that he should do all that in 
him lay to encourage her to improve her mind. 

The bloody deed was done. The next news Theodosia re- 
ceived from her father was that he was a fugitive from the sudden 
abhorrence of his fellow-citizens ; that an indictment for murder 



THEODOSIA BUER. 415 

was hanging over his head ; that his career in New York was, in 
all probability, over forever ; and that he was destined to be for 
a time a wanderer on the earth. Her happy days were at an 
end. She never blamed her father for this, or for any act of his ; 
on the contrary, she accepted without questioning his own version 
of the facts, and his own view of the morality of what he had 
done. He had formed her mind and tutored her conscience. He 
was her conscience. But though she censured him not, her days 
and nights were embittered by anxiety from this time to the last 
day of her life. A few months later her father, black with hun- 
dreds of miles of travel in an open canoe, reached her abode in 
South Carolina, and spent some weeks there before appearing for 
the last time in the chair of the Senate ; for, ruined as he was in 
fortune and good name, indicted for murder in New York and 
New Jersey, he was still Vice-President of the United States, 
and he was resolved to reappear upon the public scene, and do 
the duty which the Constitution assigned him. 

The Mexican scheme followed. Theodosia and her husband 
were both involved in it. Mr. Alston advanced money for the 
project, which was never repaid, and which, in his will, he for- 
gave. His entire loss, in consequence of his connection with that 
affair, may be reckoned at about fifty thousand dollars. Theo- 
dosia entirely and warmly approved the dazzling scheme. The 
throne of Mexico, she thought, was an object worthy of her 
father's talents, and one which would repay him for the loss of a 
brief tenure of the Presidency, and be a sufficient triumph over 
the men who were supposed to have thwarted him. Her boy, 
too, — would he not be heir-presumptive to a throne ? 

The recent publication of the " Blennerhassett Papers " ap- 
pears to dispel all that remained of the mystery which the secre- 
tive Burr chose to leave around the object of his scheme. We 
can now say with almost absolute certainty that Burr's objects were 
the following : The throne of INIexico for himself and his heirs ; 
the seizure and organization of Texas as preliminary to the grand 
design. The purchase of lands on the Washita was for the three- 
fold purpose of veiling the real object, providing a rendezvous, 
and having the means of tempting and rewarding those of the 



416 THEODOSIA BUER. 

adventurers who were not in the secret. "We can also now dis- 
cover the designed distribution of honors and places : Aaron I., 
Emperor ; Joseph Alston, Head of the Nobility and Chief Minis- 
ter ; Aaron Burr Alston, heir to the throne ; Theodosia, Chief 
Lady of the Court and Empire ; AVilkinson, General-in-Chief of 
the Army ; Blennerhassett, Embassador to the Court of St. 
James ; Commodore Truxton (perhaps). Admiral of the Navy.. 
There is not an atom of new evidence which warrants the suppo- 
sition that Burr had any design to sever the "Western States from 
the Union. If he himself had ever contemplated such an event, 
it is almost unquestionable that his followers were ignorant of it. 

The scheme exploded. Theodosia and her husband had joined 
him at the home of the Blennerhassetts, and they were near him 
when the President's proclamation dashed the scheme to atoms, 
scattered the band of adventurers, and sent Burr a prisoner to 
Richmond, charged with high treason. Mr. Alston, in a public 
letter to the Governor of South Carolina, solemnly declared that 
he was wholly ignorant of any treasonable design on the part of 
his father-in-law, and repelled with honest warmth the charge 
of his own complicity with a design so manifestly absurd and 
hopeless as that of a dismemberment of the Union. Theodosia, 
stunned with the unexpected blow, returned with her husband to 
South Carolina, ignorant of her father's fate. He was carried 
through that State on his way to the North, and there it was that 
he made his well-known attempt to appeal to the civil authorities 
and get deliverance from the guard of soldiers. From Richmond 
he wrote her a hasty note, informing her of his arrest. She and 
her husband joined him soon, and remained with him during his 
trial. 

At Richmond, during the six months of the trial. Burr tasted 
the last of the sweets of popularity. The party opposed to Mr. 
Jefferson made his cause their own, and gathered round the fall- 
en leader with ostentatious sympathy and aid. Ladies sent him 
bouquets, wine, and dainties for his table, and bestowed upon his 
daughter the most affectionate and flattering attentions. Old 
friends from New York and new friends from the "West were 
there to cheer and help the prisoner. Andrew Jackson was con- 



THEODOSIA BUKR. 417 

spicuously his friend unci defender, declaiming in the streets upon 
the tjTanny of the Administration and the perfidy of Wilkinson, 
Burr's chief accuser. Washington Irving, then in the dawn of 
his great renown, who had given the first efforts of his youthful 
pen to Burr's newspaper, was present at the trial, full of sympa- 
thy for a man whom he believed to be the victim of treachery 
and political animosity. Doubtless he was not wanting in com 
passionate homage to the young matron from South Carolina. 
Mr. Irving was then a lawyer, and had been retained as one of 
Burr's counsel ; not to render service in the court-room, but in 
the expectation that his pen would be employed in staying the 
torrent of public opinion that was setting against his client. 
Whether or not he wrote in his behalf does not appear. But his 
private letters, written at Richmond during the trial, show plain- 
ly enough that, if his head was puzzled by the confused and con- 
tradictory evidence, his heart and his imagination were on the 
side of the prisoner. 

Theodosia's presence at Richmond was of more value to her 
father than the ablest of his counsel. Every one appears to 
have loved, admired, and sympathized v?ith her. " You can't 
think," wrote Mrs. Blennerhassett, " with what joy and pride I 
read what Colonel Burr says of his daughter. I never could love 
one of my own sex as I do her." Blennerhassett himself was 
not less her friend. Luther Martin, Burr's chief counsel, almost 
worshipped her. " I find," wrote Blennerhassett, " that Luther 
Martin's idolatrous admiration of Mrs. Alston is almost as exces- 
sive as my own, but far more beneficial to his interest and injuri- 
ous to his judgment, as it is the medium of his blind attachment to 
her father, whose secrets and views, past, present, or to come, he 
is and wishes to remain ignorant of. Nor can he see a speck in 
the character or conduct of Alston, for the best of all reasons with 
him, namely, that Alston has such a wife." It plainly appears, 
too, from the letters and journal of Blennerhassett, that Alston 
did all in his power to promote the acquittal and aid the fallen 
fortunes of Burr, and that he did so, not because he believed in 
him, but because he loved his Theodosia. 

Acquitted by the jury, but condemned at the bar of public opin- 

18* AA 



418 THEODOSIA BURR. 

ion, denounced by the press, abhorred by the RepubUcan party, 
and still pursued by his creditors, Burr, in the spring of 1808, lay 
concealed at New York preparing for a secret flight to Europe. 
Asfain his devoted child travelled northward to see him once more 
before he sailed. For some weeks both were in the city, meeting 
only by night at the house of some tried friend, but exchanging 
notes and letters from hour to hour. One whole night they spent 
together, just before his departure. To her he committed his pa- 
pers, the accumulation of thirty busy years ; and it was she who 
was to collect the debts due him, and thus provide for his mainten- 
ance in Europe. 

Burr was gay and confident to the last, for he was strong in 
the belief that the British Ministry would adopt his scheme and 
aid in tearing Mexico frorq, the grasp of Napoleon. Theodosia 
was sick and sorrowful, but bore bravely up and won her fa- 
ther's commendation for her fortitude. In one of the early 
days of June father and daughter parted, to meet no more on 
earth. 

The four years of Burr's fruitless exile were to Theodosia 
years of misery. She could not collect the debts on which they 
had relied. The embargo reduced the rice-planters to extreme 
embarrassment. Her husband no longer sympathized with her 
in her yearning love for her father, though loving her as tenderly 
as ever. Old friends in New York cooled towai-d her. Her 
health was precarious. Months passed without bringing a word 
from over the sea ; and the letters that did reach her, lively and 
jovial as they were, contained no good news. She saw her 
father expelled from England, wandering aimless in Sweden and 
Germany, almost a prisoner in Paris, reduced to live on potatoes 
and dry bread ; while his own countrymen showed no signs of 
relenting toward him. In many a tender passage she praised his 
fortitude. " I witness," she wrote, in a well-known letter, " your 
extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at every new misfortune. 
Often, after reflecting on this subject, you appear to me so supe- 
rior, so elevated above all other men ; I contemplate you with 
such a strange mixture of humility, admiration, reverence, love, 
and pride, that very little superstition would be necessary to make 



THEODOSIA BURR. 419 

me worship you as a superior being ; such enthusiasm does your 
character excite in me. When I afterward revert to myself, how 
insignificant do my best qualities appear ! My vanity would be 
greater if I had not been placed so near you ; and yet my pride 
is our relationship. I had rather not live than not be the daugh- 
ter of such a man." 

Mr. Madison was Pi'esident then. In other days her father 
had been on terms of peculiar intimacy with Madison and his 
beautiful and accomplished wife. Burr, in his later years, used 
to say that it was he who had brought about the match which 
made Mrs. Madison an inmate of the Presidential mansion. 
With the members of Madison's Cabinet, too, he had been social- 
ly and politically familiar. When Theodosia perceived that her 
father had no longer a hope of success in his Mexican project, 
she became anxious for his return to America. But against this 
Avas the probability that the Administration would again arrest 
him and bring him to trial for the third time. Theodosia ventured 
to write to her old friend, Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treas- 
ury, asking him to interpose on her father's behalf. A letter still 
more interesting than this has recently come to light. It was 
addressed by Theodosia to Mrs. Madison. The coldest heart 
cannot read this eloquent and pathetic production without emo- 
tion. She writes : — 

" Madam, — You may perhaps be surprised at receiving a letter 
from one with whom you have had so little intercourse for the last few 
years. But your surprise will cease when you recollect that my father, 
once your friend, is now in exile ; and that the President only can re- 
store him to me and his country. 

" Ever since the choice of the people was first declared in favor of 
Mr. Madison, my heart, amid the universal joy, has beat with the hope 
that I, too, should soon have reason to rejoice. Convinced that Mr. 
Madison would neither feel nor judge fi'om the feeUngs or judgment 
of others, I had no doubt of his hastening to relieve a man whose 
character he had been enabled to appreciate during a confidential in- 
tercourse of long continuance, and whom [he] must know incapable 
of the designs attributed to him. My anxiety on this subject, has, 
however, become too painful to be alleviated by anticipations which no 
events have yet tended to justify ; and in this state of intolerable sus- 



420 THEODOSIA BURR. 

pense I have determined to address myself to you, and request that 
you will, m my navie, apply to the President for a removal of the prose- 
cution now existing against Aaron Burr. I still expect it from him 
as a man of feeling and candor, as one acting for the world and for 
posterity. 

" Statesmen, I am aware, deem it necessary that sentiments of liber- 
ality, and even justice, should yield to considerations of policy; but 
what policy can require the absence of my father at present ? Even 
had he contemplated the project for which he stands arraigned, evi- 
dently to pursue it any further would now be impossible. There is not 
left one pretext of alarm even to calumny ; for bereft of fortune, 
of popular favor, and almost of friends, what could he accomplish ? 
And whatever may be the apprehensions or the clamors of the igno- 
rant and the interested, surely the timid, illiberal system which would 
sacrifice a man to a remote and unreasonable possibility that he might 
infringe some law founded on an unjust, unwarrantable suspicion that 
he would desire it, cannot be approved by Mr. Madison, and must be 
unnecessary to a President so loved, so honoi-ed. Why, then, is my 
father banished from a country for which he has encountered wounds 
and dangers and fatigue for years ? Why is he driven from his friends, 
from an only child, to pass an unlimited time in exile, and that, too, at 
an age when others are reaping the harvest of past toils, or ought at 
least to be providing seriously for the comfort of ensuing years ? I do 
not seek to soften you by this recapitulation. I only wish to remind 
you of all the injuries which are inflicted on one of the first characters 
the United States ever produced. 

" Perhaps it may be well to assure you there is no truth in a report 
lately circulated, that my father intends returning immediately. He 
never will return to conceal himself in a country on which he has 
conferred distinction. 

" To whatever fate Mr. Madison may doom this application, I trust 
it will be treated with delicacy. Of this I am the more desirous as 
Mr. Alston is ignorant of the step I 'have taken In writing to you, 
which, perhaps, nothing could excuse but the warmth of filial affection. 
If it be an error, attribute it to the indiscreet zeal of a daughter whose 
eoul sinks at the gloomy prospect of a long and indefinite separation 
from a father almost adored, and who can leave unattempted nothing 
which offers the slightest hope of procuring him redress. What, in- 
deed, would I not risk once more to see him, to hang upon him, to 
place my child on his knee, and again spend my days in the happy 
occupation of endeavoring to anticipate all his wishes. 



THEODOSIA BlIRR. 421 

" Let me entreat, my dear Madam, that you will have the considera- 
tion and goodness to answer me as speedily as possible ; my heart is 
sore with doubt and patient waiting for something definitive. No 
apologies are made for giving you this trouble, which I am sure you 
will not deem irksome to take for a daughter, an affectionate daughter, 
thus situated. Inclose your letter for me to A. J. Frederic Prevost, 
Esq., near New Ilochelle, New York. 

" That every happiness may attend you, 
" Is the sincere wish of 

" Theo. Burr Alston." 

This letter was probably not ineffectual. Certain it is that 
government offered no serious obstacle to Burr's return, and 
instituted no further proceedings against him. Probably, too, 
Theodosia received some kind of assurance to this effect, for we 
find her urging her father, not only to return, but to go boldly to 
New York among his old friends, and resume there the practice 
of his profession. The great danger to be apprehended was 
from his creditors, who then had power to confine a debtor within 
limits, if not to throw him into prison. ^^ If the worst comes to the 
worst" wrote this fond and devoted daughter, ^^ I will leave every- 
thing to suffer with you" The Italics are her own. 

He came at length. He landed in Boston, and sent word of 
his arrival to Theodosia. Rejoiced as she was, she replied 
vaguely, partly in cipher, fearing lest her letter might be opened 
on the way, and the secret of her fathei''s arrival be prematurely 
disclosed. She told him that her own health was tolerable ; that 
her child, then a fine boy of eleven, was well ; that " his little 
soul warmed at the sound of his grandfather's name " ; and that 
his education, under a competent tutor, was proceeding satisfac- 
torily. She gave directions respecting her father's hoped-for 
journey to South Carolina in the course of the summer ; and 
advised him, in case war should be declared with England, to 
offer his services to the government. He reached New York 
in May, 1812, and soon had the pleasure of informing his daugh- 
ter that his reception had been more friendly than he could have 
expected, and that in time his prospects were fair of a sufficient- 
ly lucrative practice. 



422 THEODOSIA BURR. 

Surely, now, after so many years of anxiety and sorrow, The- 
odosia — still a young woman, not thirty years of age, still 
enjoying her husband's love — might have reasonably expected 
a happy life. Alas ! there was no more happiness in store for 
her on this side of the grave. The first letter which Burr 
received from liis son-in-law after his arrival in New York con- 
tained news which struck him to the heart. 

"A few miserable weeks since," writes Mr. Alston, " and in spite of 
all the embarrassments, the troubles, and disaj^iJointments which have 
fallen to our lot since we parted, I would have congratulated you on 
your retm-n in the language of happiness. With my wife on one side 
and my boy on the other, I felt myself superior to depression. The 
present was enjoyed, the future was anticipated with enthusiasm. One 
dreadful blow has destroyed us ; reduced us to the veriest, the most 
sublimated wretchedness. That boy, on whom all rested, — our com- 
panion, our friend, — he who was to have transmitted down the 
mingled blood of Theodosia and myself, — he who was to have re- 
deemed all your glory, and shed new lustre upon our families, — that 
boy, at once our happiness and our pride, is taken from us, — is dead. 
We saw him dead. My own hand surrendered him to the grave ; yet 
we are alive. But It is past. I will not conceal from you that life is 
a burden, which, heavy as It is, wo shall both support, if not with 
dignity, at least with decency and firmness. Theodosia has endured 
all that a human being could endure ; but her admirable mind will 
triumph. She supports herself In a manner worthy of your daughter." 

The mother's heart was almost broken. 

" There is no more joy for me," she wrote. " The world is a blank. 
I have lost my boy. My child is gone forever. May Heaven, by other 
blessings, make you some amends for the noble grandson you have lost ! 
Alas ! my dear father, I do live, but how does it happen ? Of what 
am I formed that I live, and why ? Of what service can I be in this 
world, either to you or any one else, with a body reduced to prema- 
ture old age, and a mind enfeebled and bewildered ? Yet, since It is 
my lot to live, I will endeavor to fulfil my part, and exert myself to 
my utmost, though this life must henceforth be to me a bed of thorns. 
Whichever way I turn, the same anguish still assails me. You talk of 
consolation. Ah ! you know not what you have lost. I think Omnip- 
otence could give me no equivalent for my boy ; no, none, — none." 

She could not be comforted. Her health gave way. Her 



THEODOSIA BURR. 423 

husband thought that if anything could restore her to tranquillity 
and health it would be the society of her father ; and so, at the 
beginning of winter, it was resolved that she should attempt the 
dangerous voyage. Her father sent a medical friend from New 
York to attend her. 

" Mr. Alston," wrote this gentleman, " seemed rather hurt that you 
should conceive it necessary to send a person here, as he or one of his 
brothers would attend Mrs. Alston to New York. I told him you 
had some opinion of my medical talents ; that you had learned your 
daughter was in a low state of health, and required unusual attention, 
and medical attention on her voyage ; that I had torn myself from my 
family to perform this service for my friend." 

And again, a few days after : — 

" I have engaged a passage to New York for your daughter in a 
pilot-boat that has been out privateering, but has come in here, and Is 
refitting merely to get to New York. My only fears are that Gover- 
nor Alston may think the mode of conveyance too undignified, and 
object to it ; but Mrs. Alston is fully bent on going. You must not 
be surprised to see her very low, feeble, and emaciated. Her com- 
plaint Is an almost incessant nervous fever." 

The rest is known. The vessel sailed. Off Cape Hatteras, 
during a gale that swept the coast from Maine to Georgia, the 
pilot-boat went down, and not one escaped to tell the tale. The 
vessel was never heard of more. So perished this noble, gifted, 
ill-starred lady. 

The agonizing scenes that followed may be imagined. Father 
and husband were kept long in suspense. Even when many 
weeks had elapsed without bringing tidings of the vessel, there 
still remained a forlorn hope that some of her passengers might 
have been rescued by an outward-bound ship, and might return, 
after a year or two had gone by, from some distant port. Burr, 
it is said, acquired a habit, when walking upon the Battery, of 
looking wistfully down the harbor at the arriving ships, as if still 
cherishing a faint, fond hope that his Theo was coming to him 
from the other side of the world. When, years after, the tale 
was brought to him that his daughter had been carried off by 
pirates and might be still alive, he said : '•' No, no, no ; if my Theo 



424 THEODOSIA BURR. 

had survived that storm, she would have found her way to me. 
Nothing could have kept my Theo from her father." 

It was these sad events, the loss of his daughter and her boy, 
that severed Aaron Burr from the human race. Hope died with- 
in him. Ambition died. He yielded to his doom, and walked 
among men, not melancholy, but indifferent, reckless, and alone. 
With his daughter and his grandson to live and strive for, he 
might have done something in his later years to redeem his 
mime and atone for his errors. Bereft of these, he had not in his 
moral nature that which enables men who have gone astray to 
repent and begin a better life. 

Theodosia's death broke her husband's heart. Few letters are 
80 affecting as the one which he wrote to Burr when, at length, 
the certainty of her loss could no longer be resisted. 

" My boy — my wife — gone both 1 This, then, is the end of all the 
hopes we had formed. You may well observe that you feel severed 
from the human race. She was the last tie that bound us to the spe- 
cies. What have we lefl ? . . . . Yet, after all, he is a poor actor who 
cannot sustain his little hour upon the stage, be his part what it may. 
But the man who has been deemed worthy of the heart of Theodosia 
Burr, and who has felt what it was to be blessed with such a woman's, 
will never forget his elevation." 



'to^ 



He survived his wife four years. Among the papers of Theo- 
dosia was found, after her death, a letter which she had written a 
few years before she died, at a time when she supposed her end 
was near. Upon the envelope was written, — " My husband. To 
be delivered after my death. I wish this to be read immediately, 
and before my burial." Her husband never saw it, for he never 
had the courage to look into the trunk that contained her treas- 
ures. But after his death the trunk was sent to Burr, who found 
and preserved this affecting composition. We cannot conclude 
our narrative more fitly than by transcribing the thoughts that 
burdened the heart of Theodosia in view of her departure from 
the world. First, she gave directions respecting the disposal of 
her jewelry and trinkets, giving to each of her friends some token 
of her love. Then she besought her husband to provide at once 
for the support of " Peggy," an aged servant of her father, for- 



THEODOSIA BURR. ^ 425 

merly housekeeper at Eiclimond Hill, to whom, in her father's 
absence, she had contrived to pay a small pension. She then 
proceeded in these affecting terms : — 

" To you, my beloved, I leave our child ; the child of my bosom, 
who was once a part of myself, and from whom I shall shortly be sep- 
arated by the cold grave. You love him now ; henceforth love him 
for me also. And oh, my husband, attend to this last prayer of a dot- 
ing mother. Never, never listen to what any other person tells you of 
him. Be yourself his judge on all occasions. He has faults ; see 
them, and correct them yourself Desist not an instant from your en- 
deavors to secure his confidence. It is a work which requires as much 
uniformity of conduct as warmth of affection toward him. I know, 
my beloved, that you can perceive what is right on this subject as on 
every other. But recollect, these are the last words I can ever utter. 
It will tranquillize my last moments to have disburdened myself of 
them. 

" I fear you will scarcely be able to read this scrawl, but I feel hur- 
ried and agitated. Death is not welcome to me. I confess it is ever 
dreaded. You have made me too fond of life. Adieu, then, thou 
kind, thou tender husband. Adieu, friend of my heart. May Heaven 
prosper you, and may we meet hereafter. Adieu ; perhaps we may 
never see each other again in this world. You are away, I wished to 
hold you fast, and prevented you from going this moi'ning. But He 
who is wisdom itself ordains events ; we must submit to them. Least 
of all should I murmur. I, on whom so many blessings have been 
showered, — whose days have been numbered by bounties, — who have 
had such a husband, such a child, and such a father. O pardon me, 
my God, if I regret leaving these. I resign myself. Adieu, once 
more, and for the last time, my beloved. Speak of me often to our 
son. Let him love the memory of his mother, and let him know how 
he was loved by her. Your wife, your fond wife, 

Theo. 

" Let my father see my son sometimes. Do not be unkind toward 
him whom I have loved so much, I beseech you. Burn all my papers 
except my father's letters, which I beg you to return him. Adieu, 
my sweet boy. Love your father ; be grateful and affectionate to him 
while he lives; be the pride of his meridian, the support of his depart- 
ing days. Be all that he wishes ; for he made your mother happy. 
Oh ! my heavenly Father, bless them both. If it is permitted, I will 
hover round you, and guard you, and Intercede for you. I hope for 
happiness in the next world, for I have not been bad in this. 



426 THEODOSIA BUEE. 

" I had nearly forgotten to say that I charge you not to allow me to 
be stripped and washed, as is usual. I am pure enough thus to return 
to dust. Why, then, expose m-« person ? Pray see to this. If it 
does not appear contradictory or eilly, I beg to be kept as long as pos- 
sible before I am consigned to t' earth." 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 



WE all feel some curiosity respecting men who have been 
eminent in anything, — even in crime; and as this cu- 
riosity is natural and universal, it seems proper that it should be 
gratified. John Jacob Astor surpassed all the men of his 
generation in the accumulation of wealth. He began life a poor, 
hungry German boy, and died worth twenty millions of dollars. 
These facts are so remarkable, that there is no one who does not 
feel a desire to know by which means the result was produced, 
and whether the game was played fairly. We all wish, if not 
to be i*ich, yet to have more money than we now possess. We 
have known many kinds of men, but never one who felt that he 
had quite money enough. The three richest men now living in 
the United States are known to be as much interested in the in- 
crease of their possessions, and try as hard to increase them, as 
ever they did. 

This universal desire to accumulate property is right, and ne- 
cessary to the progress of the race. Like every other proper 
and virtuous desire, it may become excessive, and then it is a 
vice. So long as a man seeks property honestly, and values it 
as the means of independence, as the means of educating and 
comforting his family, as the means of securing a safe, dignified, 
and tranquil old age, as the means of private charity and public 
beneficence, let him bend himself heartily to his work, and 
enjoy the reward of his labors. It is a fine and pleasant thing 
to prosper in business, and to have a store to fall back upon in 
time of trouble. 

The reader may learn from Astor's career how money is ac- 
cumulated. Whether he can learn from it how money ought to 



430 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

be employed when it is obtained, he must judge for himself. In 
founding the Astor Library, John Jacob Astor did at least 
one magnificent deed, for which thousands unborn will honor his 
memory. That single act would atone for many errors. 

In the hall of the Astor Library, on the sides of two of the 
pillars supporting its lofty roof of glass, are two little shelves, 
each holding a single work, never taken down and seldom pe- 
rused, but nevertheless well worthy the attention of those who 
are curious in the subject of which they treat, namely, the human 
face divine. They are two marble busts, facing each other ; one 
of the founder of the Library, the other of its first President, 
"Washington Irving. A finer study in physiognomy than these 
two busts present can nowhere be found ; for never were two 
men more unlike than Astor and Irving, and never were charac- 
ter and personal history more legibly recorded than in these por- 
traits in marble. The countenance of the author is round, full, 
and handsome, the hair inclining to curl, and the chin to double. 
It is the face of a happy and genial man, formed to shine at the 
fireside and to beam from the head of a table. It is an open, 
candid, liberal, hospitable countenance, indicating far more power 
to please than to compel, but displaying in the position and car- 
riage of the head much of that dignity which we are accustomed 
to call Roman. The face of the millionnaire, on the contrary, is 
all strength ; every line in it tells of concentration and power. 
The hair is straight and long ; the forehead neither lofty nor am- 
ple, but powerfully developed in the perceptive and executive 
organs ; the eyes deeper set in the head than those of Daniel 
Webster, and overhung with immense bushy eyebrows ; the nose 
large, long, and strongly arched, the veritable nose of a man- 
compeller ; the mouth, chin, and jaws all denoting firmness and 
force ; the chest, that seat and throne of physical power, is broad 
and deep, and the back of the neck has something of the muscu- 
lar fulness which we observe in the prize-fighter and the bull ; 
the head behind the ears showing enough of propelling power, 
but almost totally wanting in the passional propensities which 
waste the force of the faculties, and divert the man from his prin- 



JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 431 

cipal object. As the spectator stands midway between the two 
busts, at some distance from both, Irving has the larger and the 
kino-lier air, and the face of Astor seems small and set. It is 
only -when you get close to the bust of Astor, observing the 
strength of each feature and its perfect proportion to the rest, — 
force everywhere, superfluity nowhere, — that you recognize the 
monarch of the counting-room ; the brain which nothing could 
confuse or disconcert ; the purpose that nothing could divert or 
defeat ; the man who could with ease and pleasure grasp and con- 
trol the multitudinous concerns of a business that embraced the 
habited and unhabited globe, — that employed ships in every 
sea, and men in every clime, and brought in to the coffers of the 
merchant the revenue of a king. That speechless bust tells us 
how it was that this man, from suffering in his father's poverty- 
stricken house the habitual pang of hunger, arrived at the great- 
est fortune, pei'haps, ever accumulated in a single lifetime ; you 
perceive that whatever thing this strong and compact man set 
himself to do, he would be certain to achieve unless stopped by 
something as powerful as a law of nature. 

The monument of these two gifted men is the airy and 
graceful interior of which their busts are the only ornament. 
Astor founded the Library, but it was probably his regard for 
Irving that induced him to appropriate part of his wealth for a 
purpose not in harmony with his own humor. Irving is known 
to us all, as only wits and poets are ever known. But of the 
singular being who possessed so remarkable a genius for accumu- 
lation, of which this Library is one of the results, little has been 
imparted to the public, and of that little the greater part is fabu- 
lous. 

A hundred years ago, in the poor little village of Waldorf, in 
the duchy of Baden, lived a jovial, good-for-nothing butcher, 
named Jacob Astor, who felt himself much more at home in the 
beer-house than at the fireside of his own house in the principal 
street of the village. At the best, the butcher of Waldorf must 
have been a poor man ; for, at that day, the inhabitants of a Ger- 
man village enjoyed the luxury of fresh meat only on great days, 
such as those of confirmation, baptism, weddings, and Christmas. 



432 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

The village itself was remote and insignificant, and though situ- 
ated in the valley of the Khine, the native home of the vine, a 
region of proverbial fertility, the immediate vicinity of "Waldorf 
was not a rich or very populous country. The home of Jacob 
Astor, therefore, seldom knew any medium between excessive 
abundance and extreme scarcity, and he was not the man to make 
the superfluity of to-day provide for the need of to-morrow; 
which was the more unfortunate as the periods of abundance 
were few and far between, and the times of scarcity extended 
over the greater part of the year. It was the custom then in 
Germany for every farmer to provide a fatted pig, calf, or bul- 
lock, against the time of harvest; and as that joyful season ap- 
proached, the village butcher went the round of the neighborhood, 
stopping a day or two at each house to kill the animals and con- 
vert their flesh into bacon, sausages, or salt beef. During this 
happy time, Jacob Astor, a merry dog, always welcome where 
pleasure and hilarity were going forward, had enough to drink, 
and his family had enough to eat. But the merry time lasted 
only six weeks. Then set in the season of scarcity, which was 
only relieved when there was a festival of the church, a wedding, 
a christening, or a birthday in some family of the village rich 
enough to provide an animal for Jacob's knife. The wife of this 
idle and improvident butcher was such a wife as such men usually 
contrive to pick up, — industrious, saving, and capable ; the main- 
stay of his house. Often she remonstrated with her wasteful and 
beer-loving husband ; the domestic sky was often overcast, and 
the children were glad to fly from the noise and dust of the tem- 
pest. 

This roistering village butcher and his worthy, much-enduring 
wife were the parents of our millionnaire. They had four sons : 
George Peter Astor, born in 1752 ; Henry Astor, born in 1754; 
John Melchior Astor, born in 1759; and John Jacob Astor, 
born July 17, 1763. Each of these sons made haste to fly from 
the privations and contentions of their home as soon as they were 
old enough ; and, what is more remarkable, each of them had a 
cast of character precisely the opposite of their thriftless father. 
They were all saving, industrious, temperate, and enterprising, 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. ' 433 

and all of them became prosperous men at an early period of 
their career. They were all duly instructed in their father's 
trade; each in turn carried about the streets of Waldorf the 
basket of meat, and accompanied the father in his harvest slaugh- 
tering tours. Jovial Jacob, we are told, gloried in being a 
butcher, but three of his sons, much to his disgust, manifested a 
repugnance to it, which was one of the causes of their flight from 
the parental nest. The eldest, who was the first to go, made his 
way to London, where an uncle was established in business as a 
maker of musical instruments. Astor and Broadwood was the 
name of the firm, a house that still exists under the title of 
Broadwood and Co., one of the most noted makers of pianos in 
England. In his uncle's manufactory George Astor served an 
apprenticeship, and became at length a partner in the firm. 
Henry Astor went next. He alone of his father's sons took to 
his father's trade. It used to be thrown in his teeth, when he 
was a thriving butcher in the city of New York, that he had 
come over to America as a private in the Hessian army. This 
may only have been the groundless taunt of an envious rival. It 
is certain, however, that he was a butcher in New York when it 
was a British post during the revolutionary war, and, remaining 
after the evacuation, made a large fortune in his business. The 
third son, John Melchior Astor, found employment in Germany, 
and arrived, at length, at the profitable post of steward to a 
nobleman's estate. 

Abandoned thus by his three brothers, John Jacob Astor had 
to endure for some years a most cheerless and miserable lot. He 
lost his mother, too, from whom he had derived all that was good 
in his character and most of the happiness of his childhood. A 
step-mother replaced her, " who loved not Jacob," nor John 
Jacob. The father, still devoted to pleasure, quarrelled so bitterly 
with his new wife, that his son was often glad to escape to the 
house of a schoolfellow (living in 1854), where he would pass 
the night in a garret or outhouse, thankfully accepting for his 
supper a crust of dry bread, and returning the next morning to 
assist in the slaughter-house or carry out the meat. It was not 
often that he had enough to eat ; his clothes were of the poorest 

19 BB 



434 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

description ; and, as to money, he absolutely had none of it. The 
unhappiness of his home and the misconduct of his father made 
him ashamed to join in the sports of the village boys ; and he 
passed much of his leisure alone, brooding over the unhappiness 
of his lot. The family increased, but not its income. It is re- 
corded of him that he tended his little sisters with care and fond- 
ness, and sought in all ways to lessen the dislike and ill-humor of 
his step-mother. 

It is not hardship, however, that enervates a lad. It is in- 
dulgence and luxury that do that. He grew a stout, healthy, 
tough, and patient boy, diligent and skilful in the discharge of 
his duty, often supplying the place of his father absent in merry- 
making. If, in later life, he overvalued money, it should not be 
forgotten that few men have had a harder experience of the want 
of money at the age when character is forming. 

The bitterest lot has its alleviations. Sometimes a letter would 
reach him from over the sea, telling of the good fortune of a 
brother in a distant land. In his old age he used to boast that in 
his boyhood he walked forty-five miles in one day for the sole 
purpose of getting a letter that had arrived from England or 
America. The Astors have always been noted for the strength 
of their family affection. Our millionnaire forgot much that he 
ought to have remembered, but he was not remiss in fulfilling 
the obligations of kindred. 

It appears, too, that he was fortunate in having a better school- 
master than could generally be found at that day in a village 
school of Germany. Valentine Jeune was his name, a French 
Protestant, whose parents had fled from their country during the 
reign of Louis XIV. He was an active and sympathetic teacher, 
and bestowed unusual pains upon the boy, partly because he 
pitied his unhappy situation, and pai'tly because of his aptitude 
to learn. Nevertheless, the school routine of those days was ex- 
tremely limited. To read and write, to cipher as far as the Rule 
of Three, to learn the Catechism by heart, and to sing the Church 
Hymns " so that the windows should rattle," — these were the 
sole accomplishments of even the best pupils of Valentine Jeune. 
Baden was then under the rule of a Catholic family. It was a 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 435 

saying in Waldorf that no raan could be appointed a swineherd 
who was not a Catholic, and that if a mayoralty were vacant the 
swineherd must have the place if there were no other Catholic 
in the town. Hence it was that the line which separated the 
Protestant minority from the Catholic majority was sharply de- 
fined, and the Protestant children were the more thoroughly in- 
doctrinated. Rev. John Pliilip Steiner, the Protestant pastor of 
Waldorf, a learned and faithful minister, was as punctilious in re- 
quiring from the children the thorough learning of the Catechism 
as a German sergeant was in exacting all the niceties of the 
parade. Young Astor became, therefore, a very decided Protes- 
tant ; he lived and died a member of the Church in which he was 
born. 

The great day in the life of a German child is that of his con- 
firmation, which usually occurs in his* fourteenth year. The 
ceremony, which was performed at Waldorf every two years, was 
a festival at once solemn and joyous. The children, long prepared 
beforehand by the joint labors of minister, schoolmaster, and 
parents, walk in procession to the church, the girls in white, the 
boys in their best clothes, and there, after the requisite examina- 
tions, the rite is performed, and the Sacrament is administered. 
The day concludes with festivity. Confirmation also is the point 
of division between childhood and youth, — between absolute de- 
pendence and the beginning of responsibility. After confirmation, 
the boys of a German peasant take their place in life as appren- 
tices or as servants ; and the girls, unless their services are re- 
quired at home, are placed in situations. Childhood ends, matu- 
rity begins, when the child has tasted for the first time the bread 
and wine of the Communion. Whether a boy then becomes an 
apprentice or a servant depends upon whether his parents have 
been provident enough to save a sum of money sufficient to pay 
the usual premium required by a master as compensation for his 
trouble in teaching his trade. This premium varied at that day 
from fifty dollars to two hundred, according to the difficulty and 
respectability of the vocation. A carpenter or a blacksmith 
might be satisfied with a premium of sixty or seventy dollars, 
while a cabinet-maker would demand a hundred, and a musical 
instrument maker or a clock-maker two hundred. 



436 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

On Palm Sunday, 1777, when he was about fourteen years of 
age, John Jacob Astor was confirmed. He then consulted his 
father upon his future. Money to apprentice him there was none 
in the paternal coffers. The trade of butcher he knew and dis- 
liked. Nor was he inclined to accept as his destiny for life the 
condition of servant or laborer. The father, who thought the 
occupation of butcher one of the. best in the world, and who 
needed the help of his son, particularly in the approaching season 
of harvest, paid no heed to the entreaties of the lad, who saw 
himself condemned without hope to a business which he loathed, 
and to labor at it without reward. 

A deep discontent settled upon him. The tidings of the good 
fortune of his brothers inflamed his desire to seek his fortune in 
the world. The news of the Revolutionary War, which drew 
all eyes upon America, and in which the people of all lands sym- 
pathized with the struggUng colonies, had its effect upon him. 
He began to long for the " New Land," as the Germans then 
styled America ; and it is believed in Waldorf that soon after the 
capture of Burgoyne had spread abroad a confidence in the final 
success of the colonists, the youth formed the secret determina- 
tion to emigrate to America. Nevertheless, he had to wait three 
miserable years longer, until the surrender of Cornwallis made it 
certain that America was to be free, before he was able to enter 
upon the gratification of his desire. 

In getting to America, he displayed the same sagacity in adapt- 
ing means to ends that distinguished him during his business ca- 
reer in New York. Money he had never had in his life, beyond 
a few silver coins of the smallest denomination. His father had 
none to give him, even if he had been inclined to do so. It was 
only when the lad was evidently resolved to go that he gave a 
slow, reluctant consent to his departure. Waldorf is nearly three 
hundred miles from the seaport in Holland most convenient for 
his purpose. Despite the difficulties, this penniless youth formed 
the resolution of going down the Rhine to Holland, there taking 
ship for London, where he would join his brother, and, while 
earning money for his passage to America, learn the language of 
the country to which he was destined. It appears that he dreaded 



JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 437 

more the difficulties of the English tongue than he did those of 
the long and expensive journey ; but he was resolved not to sail 
for America until he had acquired the language, and saved a lit- 
tle money beyond the expenses of the voyage. It appears, also, 
that there prevailed in Baden the belief that Americans were 
exceedingly selfish and inhospitable, and regarded the poor emi- 
grant only in the light of prey. John Jacob was determined not 
to land among such a people without the means of understanding 
their tricks and paying his way. In all ways, too, he endeavored 
to get a knowledge of the country to which he was going. 

With a small bundle of clothes hung over his shoulder upon a 
stick, with a crown or two in his pocket, he said the last farewell 
to his father and his friends, and set out on foot for the Rhine, a 
few miles distant. Valentine Jeune, his old schoolmaster, said, 
as the lad was lost to view : "I am not afraid of Jacob ; he '11 get 
through the world. He has a clear head and everything right 
behind the ears." He was then a stout, strong lad of nearly 
seventeen, exceedingly well made, though slightly undersized, 
and he had a clear, composed, intelligent look in the eyes, which 
seemed to ratify the prediction of the schoolmaster. He strode 
manfully out of town, with tears in his eyes and a sob in his 
throat, — for he loved his father, his friends, and his native vil- 
lage, though his lot there had been forlorn enough. While still 
in sight of Waldorf, he sat down under a tree and thought of 
the future before him and the friends he had left. He there, as 
he used to relate in after-life, made three resolutions : to be hon- 
est, to be industrious, and not to gamble, — excellent resolutions, 
as far as they go. Having sat awhile under the tree, he took up 
his bundle and resumed his journey with better heart. 

It was by no means the intention of this sagacious youth to 
walk all the way to the sea-coast. There was a much more con- 
venient way at that time of accomplishing the distance, even to a 
young man with only two dollars in his pocket. The Black For- 
est is partly in Astor's native Baden. The rafts of timber cut in 
the Black Forest, instead of floating down the Rhine in the man- 
ner practised in America, used to be rowed by sixty or eighty 
men each, who were paid high wages, as the labor was severe. 



438 JOHN JACOB ASTOK. 

Large numbers of stalwart emigrants availed themselves of thia 
mode of getting from the interior to the sea-coast, by which they 
earned their subsistence on the way and about ten dollars in 
money. The tradition in Waldorf is, that young Astor worked 
his passage down the Rhine, and earned his passage-money to 
England as an oarsman on one of these rafts. Hard as the labor 
was, the oarsmen had a merry time of it, cheering their toil with 
jest and song by night and day. On the fourteenth day after 
leaving home, our youth found himself at a Dutch seaport, with 
a larger sum of money than he had ever before possessed. He 
took passage for London, where he landed a few days after, in total 
ignorance of the place and the language. His brother welcomed 
him with German warmth, and assisted him to procure employ- 
ment, — probably in the flute and piano manufactory of Astor 
and Broad wood. 

As the foregoing brief account of the early life of John Jacob 
Astor differs essentially from any previously published in the 
United States, it is proper tiiat the reader should be informed of 
the sources whence we have derived information so novel and un- 
expected. The principal source is a small biography of Astor 
published in Germany about ten years ago, written by a native 
of Baden, a Lutheran clergyman, wjio gatliered his material 
in Waldorf, where were then living a few aged persons who 
remembered Astor when he was a sad and solitary lad in his 
father's disorderly house. The statements of this little book are 
confirmed by what some of the surviving friends and descend- 
ants of Mr. Astor in New York remember of liis own conversa- 
tion respecting his early days. He seldom spoke of his life in 
Germany, though he remembered his native place with fondness, 
revisited it in the time of his prosperity, pensioned his father, 
and forgot not Waldorf in his will ; but the little that he did say 
of his youtliful years accords with the curious narrative in the 
work to which we have alluded. We believe the reader may 
rely on our story as being essentially true. 

Astor brought to London, according to our quaint Lutheran, 
"a pious, true, and godly spirit, a clear understanding, a sound 
youthful elbow-grease, and the wish to put it to good use." Dur- 



JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 439 

ing the two years of his residence in the British metropolis, he 
strove most assiduously for three objects : 1. To save money ; 2. 
To acquire the English language; 3. To get information respecting 
America. Much to his relief and gratification, he found the ac- 
quisition of the language to be the least of his difficulties. "Work- 
ing in a shop with English mechanics, and having few German 
friends, he was generally dependent upon the language of the 
country for the communication of his desires ; and he was as 
much surprised as delighted to find how many points of similarity 
there were between the two languages. In about six weeks, he 
used to say, he could make himself understood a little in English, 
and long before he left London he could speak it fluently. He 
never learned to write English correctly in his life, nor could he 
ever speak it without a decided German accent; but he could al- 
ways express his meaning with simplicity and force, both orally 
and in writing. Trustworthy information respecting Araei'ica, in 
the absence of maps, gazetteers, and books of travel, was more 
difficult to procure. The ordinaiy Englishman of that day re- 
garded America with horror or contempt as perverse and rebel- 
lious colonies, making a great to-do about a paltry tax, and giving 
" the best of kings " a world of trouble for nothing, lie prob- 
ably heard little of the thundering eloquence with which Fox, 
Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan were nightly defending the American 
cause in the House of Commons, and assailing the infatuation of 
the Government in prosecuting a hopeless war. As often, how- 
ever, as our youth met with any one who had been in America, 
he plied him with questions, and occasionally he heard from his 
brother in New York. Henry Astor was already established as 
a butcher on his own account, wheeling home in a wheelbarrow 
from Bull's Head his slender purchases of sheep and calves. But 
the great difficulty of John Jacob in London was the accumu- 
lation of money. Having no trade, his wages were necessarily 
small. Tliough he rose with the lark, and was at work as early 
as five in the morning, — though he labored with all his might, 
and saved every farthing that he could spare, — it was two years 
before he had saved enough for his purpose. In September, 
1783, he possessed a good suit of Sunday clothes, in the Eng- 



440 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

lish style, and about fifteen English guineas, ■ — the total result 
of two years of unremitting toil and most pinching economy ; 
and here again charity requires the remark that if Astor the mil- 
lionnaire carried the virtue of economy to an extreme, it was 
Astor the struggling youth in a strange land who learned the 
value of money. 

In that month of September, 1783, the news reached Loudon 
that Dr. Franklin and his associates in Paris, after two years of 
negotiation, had signed the definitive treaty which completed the 
independence of the United States. Franklin had been in the 
habit of predicting that as soon as America had become an inde- 
pendent nation, the best blood in Europe, and some of the finest 
fortunes, would hasten to seek a career or an asylum in the New 
World. Perhaps he would have hardly recognized the emigra- 
tion of this poor German youth as part of the fulfilment of his 
prophecy. Nevertheless, the news of the conclusion of the treaty 
had no sooner reached England than young Astor, then twenty 
years old, began to prepare for his departure for the " New 
Land," and in November he embarked for Baltimore. He paid 
five of his guineas for a passage in the steerage, which entitled 
him to sailors' fare of salt beef and biscuit. He invested part of 
his remaining capital in seven flutes, and carried the rest, about 
five pounds sterling, in the form of money. 

America gave a cold welcome to the young emigrant. The 
winter of 1783-4 was one of the celebrated severe winters on 
both sides of the ocean. November gales and December storms 
wreaked all their fury upon the ship, retarding its progress so 
long that January arrived before she had reached Chesapeake 
Bay. Floating ice filled the bay as far as the eye could reach, 
and a January storm drove the ship among the masses with such 
force, that she was in danger of being broken to pieces. It was 
on one of those days of peril and consternation, that young Astor 
appeared on deck in his best clothes, and on being asked the rea- 
son of this strange proceeding, said that if he escaped with life he 
should save his best clothes, and if he lost it his clothes would be 
of no further use to him. Tradition further reports that he, a 
steerage passenger, ventured one day to come upon the quarter- 



JOHN JACOB ASTOK. 441 

deck, when the captain roughly ordered him forward. Tradition 
adds that that very captain, twenty years after, commanded a 
ship owned by the steerage passenger. When the ship was with- 
in a day's sail of her port the wind died away, the cold increased, 
and the next morning beheld the vessel hard and fast in a sea of ice. 
For two whole months she remained immovable. Provisions 
gave out. The passengers were only relieved when the ice ex- 
tended to the shore, and became strong enough to afford commu- 
nication with other ships and with the coasts of the bay. Some 
of the passengers made their way to the shore, and travelled by 
land to their homes ; but this resource was not within the means 
of our young adventurer, and he was obliged to stick to the ship. 
Fortune is an obsequious jade, that favors the strong and turns 
her back upon the weak. This exasperating delay of two months 
was the means of 2:)utting young Astor upon the shortest and easi- 
est road to fortune that the continent of America then afforded 
to a poor man. Among his fellow-passengers there was one 
German, with whom he made acquaintance on the voyage, and 
with whom he continually associated during the detention of the 
winter. They told each other their past history, their present 
plans, their future hopes. The stranger informed young Astor 
that he too had emigrated to America, a few years before, with- 
out friends or money ; that he had soon managed to get into the 
business of buying furs of the Indians, and of the boatmen com- 
ing to New York from the river settlements ; that at length he 
had embarked all his capital in skins, and had taken them him- 
self to England in a returning transport, where he had sold them 
to great advantage, and had invested the proceeds in toys and 
trinkets, with which to continue his trade in the wilderness. He 
strongly advised Astor to follow his example. He told him the 
prices of the various skins in America, and the prices they com- 
manded in London. With German friendliness he imparted to 
him the secrets of the craft : told him where to buy, how to pack, 
transport, and preserve the skins ; the names of the principal 
dealers in New York, Montreal, and London ; and the season of 
the year when the skins were most abundant. All this was in- 
teresting to the young man ; but he asked his friend how it was 
19* 



442 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

possible to begin such a business without capital. The stranger 
told him tliat no great capital was required for a beginning. 
With a basket of toys, or even of cakes, he said, a man could 
buy valuable skins on the wharves and in the markets of New 
York, which could be sold with some profit to New York furriers. 
But the grand object was to establish a connection with a house 
in London, where furs brought four or five times their value in 
America. In short, John Jacob Astor determined to lose no 
time after reaching New York, ia trying his hand at this profit- 
able ti-affic. 

The ice broke up in March. The ship made its way to Balti- 
more, and the two friends travelled together to New York. The 
detention in the ice and the journey to New York almost ex- 
hausted Astor's purse. He arrived in this city, where now his 
estate is vaUied at forty millions, with little more than his seven 
German flutes, and a long German head full of available knowl- 
edge and quiet determination. He went straight to the humble 
abode of his brother Henry, a kindly, generous, jovial soul, who 
gave him a truly fraternal welcome, and received with hospitable 
warmth the companion of his voyage. 

Henry Astor's prosperity had been temporarily checked by the 
evacuation of New York, which had occurred five months before, 
and which had deprived the tradesmen of the city of their best 
customers. It was not only the British army that had left the 
city in November, 1783, but a host of British officials and old 
Tory families as well ; while the new-comers were Whigs, whom 
seven years of war had impoverished, and young adventurers 
who had still their career to make. During the devolution, 
Henry Astor had speculated occasionally in cattle captured from 
the farmers of Westchester, which were sold at auction at Bull's 
Head, and he had advanced from a wheelbarrow to the ownership 
of a horse. An advertisement informs us that, about the time 
of his brother's arrival, this horse was stolen, with saddle and 
bridle, and that the owner offered three guineas reward for the 
recovery of the property ; but that "for the thief, horse, saddle, 
and bridle, ten guineas would be paid." A month after, we find 
him becoming a citizen of the United States, and soon he began 
to share in the returning prosperity of the city. 



JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 443 

In the mean time, however, he could do little for his new-found 
brother. During the first evening of his brother's stay at his 
house the question was discussed, What should the young man do 
in his n-ew country ? The charms of the fur business were duly 
portrayed by the friend of the youth, who also expressed his 
preference for it. It was agreed, at length, that the best plan 
would be for the young man to seek employment with some one 
already in the business, in order to learn the modes of proceed- 
inp-. as well as to acquire a knowledge of the country. The 
young stranger anxiously inquired how much premium would be 
demanded by a furrier for teaching the business to a novice, and 
he was at once astonished and relieved to learn that no such thing 
was known in America, and that he might expect his board and 
small wages even from the start. So, the next day, the brothers 
and their friend proceeded together to the store of Robert 
Bowne, an aged and benevolent Quaker, long established in the 
business of buying, curing, and exporting peltries. It chanced 
that he needed a hand. Pleased with the appearance and de- 
meanor of the young man, he employed him (as tradition reports) 
at two dollars a week and his board. Astor took up his abode in 
his master's house, and was soon at work. We can tell the 
reader with certainty what was the nature of the youth's fii'st 
day's work in his adopted country ; for, in his old age, he was 
often heard to say that the first thing he did for Mr. Bowne was 
to beat furs ; which, indeed, was his principal employment during 
the whole of the following summer, — furs requiring to be fre- 
quently beaten to keep the moths from destroying them. 

Perhaps among our readers there are some who have formed 
the resolution to get on in the world and become rich. We ad- 
vise such to observe how young Astor proceeded. We are far 
from desiring to hold up this able man as a model for the young; 
yet it must be owned that in the art of prospering in business he has 
had no equal in America; and in that his example may be useful. 
Now, observe the secret. It was not plodding merely, though no 
man ever labored more steadily than he. Mr. Bowne, discover- 
ing what a prize he had, raised his wages at the end of the first 
month. Nor was it merely his strict observance of the rules of 



444 JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 

temperance and morality, though that is essential to any worthy 
success. The great secret of Astor's early, rapid, and uniform 
success in business appears to have been, that he acted always 
upon the maxim that knowledge is power ! He labored un- 
ceasingly at Mr. Bowne's to learn the business. He put all his 
soul into the work of getting a knowledge of furs, fur-bearing 
animals, fur-dealers, fur-markets, fur-gathering Indians, fur- 
abounding countries. In those days a considerable number of 
bear skins and beaver skins were brought directly to Bowne's 
store by the Indians and countrymen of the vicinity, who had 
shot or trapped the animals. These men Astor questioned ; and 
neglected no other opportunity of procuring the information he 
desired. It used to be observed of Astor that he absolutely loved 
a fine skin. In later days he would have a superior fur hung up 
in his counting-room as other men hang pictures ; and this, ap- 
parently, for the mere pleasure of feeling, showing, and admiring 
it. , He would pass his hand fondly over it, extolling its charms 
with an approach to enthusiasm ; not, however, forgetting to 
mention that in Canton it would bring him in five hundred dol- 
lars. So heartily did he throw himself into his business. 

Growing rapidly in the confidence of his employer, he was 
soon intrusted with more important duties than the beating of 
furs. He was employed in buying them from the Indians and 
hunters who brought them to the city. Soon, too, he took the 
place of his employer in the annual journey to Montreal, then the 
chief fur mart of the country. "With a pack upon his back, he 
struck into the wilderness above Albany, and walked to Lake 
George, which he ascended in a canoe, and having thus reached 
Champlain he embarked again, and sailed to the head of that 
lake. Returning with his furs, he employed the Indians in trans- 
porting them to the Hudson, and brought them to the city in a 
sloop. He was formed by nature for a life like this. His frame 
was capable of great endurance, and he had the knack of getting 
the best of a bargain. The Indian is a great bargainer. The 
time was gone by when a nail or a little red paint would induce 
him to part with valuable peltries. It required skill and address 
on the part of the trader, both in selecting the articles likely to 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 445 

tempt the vanity or the cupidity of the red man, and in conduct- 
ing the tedious negotiation which usually preceded an exchange 
of commodities. It was in this kind of traffic, doubtless, that our 
young German acquired that unconquerable propensity for mak- 
ing hard bargains, which was so marked a feature in his character 
as a merchant. He could never rise superior to this early- 
acquired habit. He never knew what it was to exchange places 
with the opposite party, and survey a transaction from his point 
of view. He exulted not in compensating liberal service liber- 
ally. In all transactions he kept in view the simple object of 
giving the least and getting the most. 

Meanwhile his brother Henry was flourishing. He married 
the beautiful daughter of a brother butcher, and the young wife, 
according to the fashion of the time, disdained not to assist her 
husband even in the slaughter-house as well as in the market- 
place. Colonel Devoe, in his well-known Market Book, informs 
us that Henry Astor was exceedingly proud of his pretty wife, 
often bringing her home presents of gay dresses and ribbons, and 
speakmg of her as " de pink of de Bowery." The butchers of 
that day complained bitterly of him, because he used to ride out 
of town fifteen or twenty miles, and buy up the droves of cattle 
coming to the city, which he would drive in and sell at an ad- 
vanced price to the less enterprising butchers. He gained a foi'- 
tune by his business, which would have been thought immense, 
if the colossal wealth of his brother had not reduced all other es- 
tates to comparative insignificance. It was he who bought, for 
eight hundred dollars, the acre of ground on part of which the 
old Bowery Theatre now stands. 

John Jacob Astor remained not long in the employment of 
Robert Bowne. It was a peculiarity of the business of a furrier 
at that day, that, while it admitted of unlimited extension, it could 
be begun on the smallest scale, with a very insignificant capital. 
Every farmer's boy in the vicinity of New York had occasionally 
a skin to sell, and bears abounded in the Catskill Mountains. 
Indeed the time had not long gone by when beaver skins formed 
part of the currency of the city. All Northern and "Western New 
York was still a fur-yielding country. Even Long Island fur- 



446 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

nisliecl its quota. So that, while the fur business was one that 
rewarded the enterprise of great and wealthy companies, employ- 
ing thousands of men and fleets of ship.-, it afforded an opening to 
young Astor, who, with the assistance of his brother, could com- 
mand a capital of only a very few hundred dollars. In a little 
shop in Water Street, with a back-room, a yard, and a shed, the 
shop furnished with only a few toys and trinkets, Astor be^an 
business about the year 1786. He had then, as always, the most 
unbounded confidence in his own abilities. He used to relate 
that, at this time, a new row of houses in Broadway was the talk 
of the city from their magnitude and beauty. Passing them 
one day, he said to himself: "I'll build some time or other a 
greater house than any of these, and in this very street." He 
used also to say, in his old age : " Tlie first hundred thousand 
dollars — that was hard to get; but afterward it was easy to 
make more." 

Having set up for himself, he worked with the quiet, indomi- 
table ardor of a German who sees clearly his way open before 
him. At first he did everything for himself. He bought, cured, 
beat, packed, and sold his skins. From dawn till dark, he assid- 
uously labored. At the proper seasons of the year, with his pack 
on his back, he made short excursions into tlie country, collecting 
skins from house to house, gradually extending the area of his 
travels, till he knew the State of New York as no man of his 
day knew it. He used to boast, late in life, when the Erie Canal 
had called into being a line of thriving towns through the centre 
of the State, that he had himself, in his numberless tramps, des- 
ignated the sites of those towns, and predicted that one day they 
would be the centres of business and population. Particularly he 
noted the spotswhere Rochester aud Buffalo now stand, one hav- 
ing a harbor on Lake Erie, the other upon Lake Ontario. Those 
places, he predicted, would one day be large and prosperous cities, 
and that prediction he made when tliere was scarcely a settle- 
ment at Buffalo, and only wigwams on the site of Rochester. At 
this time he had a partner who usually remained in the city, while 
the agile and enduring Astor traversed the wilderness. 

It was his first voyage to London that established his business 



JOHN JACOB ASTOU. 447 

on a solid foundation. As soon as he had accumulated a few 
bales of the skins suited to the European market, he took passage 
in the steerage of a ship and conveyed them to London. He sold 
them to great advantage, and established connections with houses 
to which he could in future consign his furs, and from which he 
could procure the articles best adapted to the taste of Indians and 
hunters. But his most important operation in London was to 
make an arrangement with the firm of Astor & Broadwood, by 
which he became the New York agent for the sale of their 
pianos, flutes, and violins. He is believed to have been the first 
man in New York who kept constantly for sale a supply of musi- 
cal merchandise, of which the annual sale in New York is now 
reckoned at five millions of dollars. On his return to New York, 
he opened a little dingy store in C4old Street, between Fulton and 
Ann, and swung out a sign to the breeze bearing the words : — 

FURS AND PIANOS. 

There were until recently aged men among us who remem- 
bered seeing this sign over the store of Mr. Astor, and in some 
old houses are preserved ancient pianos, bearing the name of J. 
J. Astor, as the seller thereof. Violins and flutes, also, are occa- 
sionally met with that have his name upon them. In 1790, seven 
years after his arrival in this city, he was of sufficient importauce 
to appear in the Directory thus : — 

ASTOR, J. J., Fur Trader, 40 Little Dock Street (now part of 
Water Street). 

In this time of his dawning prosperity, while still inhabiting 
the small house of which his store was a part, he married. Sa- 
rah Todd was the maiden name of his wife. As a connection of 
the family of Brevoort, she was then considered to be somewhat 
superior to her husband in point of social rank, and she brought 
him a fortune, by no means despised by him at that time, of three 
hundred dollars. She threw herself heartily into her husband's 
growing business, laboring with her own hands, buying, sorting, 
and beating the furs. He used to say that she was as good a 
judge of the value of peltries as himself, and that her opinion in 
a matter of business was better than that of most merchants. 



448 JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 

Of a man like Astor all kinds of stories will be told, some 
true, some false ; some founded upon fact, but exaggerated or 
distorted. It is said, for example, that wben he went into busi- 
ness for himself, he used to go around among the shops and 
markets with a basket of toys and cakes upon his arm, exchang- 
ing those articles for furs. There are certainly old people among 
us who remember hearing their parents say that they saw him 
doing this. The story is not improbable, for he had no false 
pride, and was ready to turn his hand to anything that was 
honest. 

Mr. Astor still traversed the wilderness. The father of the 
late lamented General "Wadsworth used to relate that he met him 
once in the woods of Western New York in a sad plight. His 
wagon had broken down in the midst of a swamp. In the melee 
all his gold had rolled away through the bottom of the vehicle, 
and was irrecoverably lost ; and Astor was seen emerging from 
the swamp covered with mud and carrying on his shoulder an 
axe, — the sole relic of his property. When at length, in 1794, 
Jay's treaty caused the evacuation of the western forts held by 
the British, his business so rapidly extended that he was enabled 
to devolve these laborious journeys upon others, while he remained 
in New York, controlling a business that now embraced the re- 
gion of the great lakes, and gave employment to a host of trap- 
pers, collectors, and agents. He was soon in a position to purchase 
a ship, in which his furs were carried to London, and in which 
he occasionally made a voyage himself. He was still observed 
to be most assiduous in the pursuit of commercial knowledge. 
He was never weary of inquu-ing about the markets of Europe 
and Asia, the ruling prices and commodities of each, the stand- 
ing of commercial houses, and all other particulars that could be 
of use. Hence his directions to his captains and agents were 
always explicit and minute, and if any enterprise failed to be 
profitable it could generally be distinctly seen that it was because 
his orders had not been obeyed. In London, he became most 
intimately conversant with the operations of the East-India 
Company and with the China trade. China being the best 
market in the world for furs, and furnishing commodities which 



I 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 449 

in America had become necessaries of life, he was quick to per- 
ceive Avhat an advantaije he would have over other merchants 
by sending his ships to Canton provided with furs as well as 
dollars. It was about the year 1800 that he sent his first ship 
to Canton, and he continued to carry on commerce with China 
for twenty-seven years, sometimes with loss, generally with profit, 
and occasionally with splendid and bewildering success. 

It was not, however, until the year 1800, when he was worth ' 
a quarter of a million dollars, and had been in business fifteen 
years, that he indulged himself in the comfort of living in a house 
apart from his business. In 1794 he appears in the Directory 
as "Furrier, 149 Broadway." From 1796 to 1799 he figures as 
" Fur Merchant, 149 Broadway." In 1800 he had a storehouse 
at 141 Greenwich Street, and lived at 223 Broadway, on the site 
of the present Astor House. In 1801, his store was at 71 
Liberty Street, and he had removed his residence back to 149 
Broadway. The year following we find him again at 223 Broad- 
way, where he continued to reside for a quarter of a century. 
His house was such as a fifth-rate merchant would now consider 
much beneath his dignity. Mr. As^or, Indeed, had a singular 
dislike to living in a large house. He had neither expensive 
tastes nor wasteful vices. His luxuries were a pipe, a glass of 
beer, a game of draughts, a ride on horseback, and the theatre. 
Of the theatre he was particularly fond. He seldom missed a 
good performance In the palmy days of the " Old Park." 

It was his instinctive abhon-ence of ostentation and waste that 
enabled him, as it were, to glide Into the millionnaire without 
being observed by his neighbors. He used to relate, with a 
chuckle, that he was worth a million before any one suspected it. 
A dandy bank-clerk, one day, having expressed a doubt as to 
the sufiiciency of his name to a piece of mercantile paper, Astor 
asked him how much he thought he was worth. The clerk 
mentioned a sum ludicrously less than the real amount. Astor 
then asked him how much he supposed this and that leading 
merchant, whom he named, was worth. The young man en- 
dowed them with generous sum-totals proportioned to their style 
of living. " Well," said Astor, " I am worth more than any of 

CO 



450 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

them, I will not say how much I am worth, but I am worth 
more than any sum you have mentioned." " Then," said the 
clerk, " you are even a greater fool than I took you for, to work 
as hard as you do." The old man would tell this story with 
great glee, for he always liked a joke. 

In the course of his long life he had frequent opportunities of 
observing what becomes of those gay merchants who live up to 
the incomes of prosperous years, regardless of the inevitable time 
of commercial collapse. It must be owned that he held in utter 
contempt the dashing style of living and doing business which 
has too often pi-evailed in New York ; and he was very slow to 
give credit to a house that carried sail out of proportion to its 
ballast. Nevertheless, he was himself no plodder when plodding 
had ceased to be necessary. At the time when his affairs were 
on their greatest scale, he would leave his office at two in the 
afternoon, go home to an early dinner, then mount his horse and 
ride about the Island till it was time to go to the theatre. He 
had a strong aversion to illegitimate speculation, and particularly 
to gambling in stocks. The note-shaving and stock-jobbing op- 
erations of the Rothschilds he despised. It was his pride and 
boast that he gained his own fortune by legitimate commerce, 
and by the legitimate investment of his profits. Having an un- 
bounded faith in the destiny of the United States, and in the 
future commercial supremacy of New York, it was his custom, 
from about the year 1800, to invest his gains in the purchase of 
lots and lands on Manhattan Island. 

We have all heai'd much of the closeness, or rather the mean- 
ness, of this remarkable man. Truth compels us to admit, as we 
have before intimated, that he was not generous, except to his 
own kindred. His liberality began and ended in his own family. 
Very seldom during his lifetime did he willingly do a generous 
act outside of the little circle of his relations and descendants. 
To get all that he could, and to keep nearly all that he got, — 
those were the laws of his being. He had a vast genius for 
making money, and that was all that he had. 

It is a pleasure to know that sometimes his extreme closeness 
defeated its own object. He once lost seventy thousand dollars 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 451 

by committing a piece of petty injustice toward his best captain. 
This gallant sailor, being notified by an insurance office of the 
necessity of having a chronometer on board his ship, spoke to Mr. 
Astor on the subject, who advised the captain to buy one. 

" But," said the captain, " I have no five hundred dollars to 
spare for such a purpose ; the chronometer should belong to the 
ship." 

" Well," said the merchant, " you need not pay for it now ; 
pay for it at your convenience." 

The captain still objecting, Astor, after a prolonged higgling, 
authorized him to buy a chronometer, and charge it to the ship's 
account ; which was done. Sailing-day was at hand. The ship 
was hauled into the stream. The captain, as is the custom, 
handed in his account. Astor, subjecting it to his usual close 
scrutiny, observed the novel item of five hundred dollars for the 
chronometer. He objected, averring that it was understood be- 
tween them that the captain was to pay for the instrument. The 
worthy sailor recalled the conversation, and firmly held to his rec- 
ollection of it. Astor insisting on his own view of the matter, 
the captain was so profoundly disgusted that, important as the 
command of the ship was to him, he resigned his post. Another 
captain was soon found, and the ship sailed for China. Another 
house, which was then engaged in the China trade, knowing tht; 
worth of this " king of captains," as Astor himself used to style 
him, bought him a ship and despatched him to Canton two 
months after the departure of Astor's vessel. Our captain, put 
upon his mettle, employed all his skill to accelerate the speed of 
his ship, and had such success, that he reached New York with a 
full cargo of tea just seven days after the arrival of Mr. Astor's 
ship. Astor, not expecting another ship for months, and there- 
fore sure of monopolizing the market, had not yet broken bulk, 
nor even taken off the hatchways. Our captain arrived on a 
Saturday. Advertisements and handbills were immediately is- 
sued, and on the Wednesday morning following, as the custom 
then was, the auction sale of the tea began on the wharf, — two 
barrels of punch contributing to the eclat and hilarity of the oc- 
casion. The cargo was sold to good advantage, and the market 



452 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

was glutted. Astor lost in consequence the entire profits of the 
voyage, not less than the sum named above. Meeting the cap- 
tain some time after in Broadway, he said, — 

" I had better have paid for that chronometer of yours." 

Without ever acknowledging that he had been in the wrong, 
he was glad enough to engage the captain's future services. 
This anecdote we received from the worthy captain's own lips. 

On one occasion the same officer had the opportunity of ren- 
dering the great merchant a most signal service. The agent of 
Mr. Astor in China suddenly died at a time when the property 
in his charge amounted to about seven hundred thousand dollars. 
Our captain, who was not then in Aster's employ, was perfectly 
aware that if this immense property fell into official hands, as the 
law required, not one dollar of it would ever again find its way 
to the coffers of its proprietor. By a series of bold, prompt, and 
skilful measures, he rescued it from the official maw, and made it 
yield a profit to the owner. JMr. Astor acknowledged the ser- 
vice. He acknowledged it with emphasis and a great show of 
gratitude. He said many times : — 

"If you had not done just as you did, I should never have 
seen one dollar of my money ; no, not one dollar of it." 

But he not only did not compensate him for his seiwices, but 
he did not even reimburse the small sum of money which the 
captain had expended in performing those services. Astor was 
then worth ten millions, and the captain had his hundred dollars 
a month and a family of young children. 

Thus the great merchant recompensed great services. He 
was not more just in rewarding small ones. On one occasion a 
ship of his arrived from China, which he found necessary to de- 
spatch at once to Amsterdam, the market in New York being 
depressed by an over-supply of China merchandise. But on 
board this ship, under a mountain of tea-chests, the owner had 
two pipes of precious Madeira wine, which had been sent on a 
voyage for the improvement of its constitution. 

" Can you get out that wine," asked the owner, " without dis- 
charging the tea ? " 

The captain thought he could. 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 453 

" Well, then," said Mr. Astor, "you get it out, and I'll give you 
a demijohn of it. You '11 say it 's the best wine you ever tasted." 

It required the labor of the whole ship's crew for two days to 
get out those two pipes of wine. They were sent to the house 
of Mr. Astor. A year passed. The captain had been to Am- 
sterdam and back, but he had received no tidings of his demijohn 
of Madeira. One day, when Mr. Astor was on board the ship, 
the captain ventured to remind the great man, in a jocular man- 
ner, that he had not received the wine. 

" Ah ! " said Astor, " don't you know the reason ? It is n't 
fine yet. Wait till it is fine, and you '11 say you never tasted 
such Madeira." The captain never heard of that wine again. 

These traits show the moral weakness of the man. It is only 
when we regard his mercantile exploits that we can admire him. 
He was, unquestionably, one of the ablest, boldest, and most suc- 
cessful operators that ever lived. He seldom made a mistake 
in the conduct of business. Having formed his plan, he carried 
it out with a nerve and steadiness, with such a firm and easy 
grasp of all the details, that he seemed rather to be playing an 
interesting game than transacting business. " He could com- 
mand an army of five hundred thousand men ! " exclaimed one 
of his admirers. That was an erroneous remark. He could 
have commanded an army of five hundred thousand tea-chests, 
with a heavy auxiliary force of otter skins and beaver skins. 
But a commander of men must be superior morally as well as 
intellectually. He must be able to win the love and excite the 
enthusiasm of his followers. Astor would have made a splendid 
commissary-general to the army of Xerxes, but he could no 
more have conquered Greece than Xerxes himself. 

The reader may be curious to know by what means Mr. Astor 
became so preposterously rich. Few successful men gain a single 
million by legitimate commerce. A million dollars is a most 
enormous sum of money. It requires a considerable effort of 
the mind to conceive it. But this indomitable little German 
managed, in the course of sixty years, to accumulate twenty mil- 
lions ; of which, probably, not more than two millions was the 
fruit of his business as a fur trader and China merchant. 



454 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

At that day the fur trade was exceedingly profitable, as well 
as of vast extent. It is estimated that about the year 1800 the 
number of peltries annually furnished to commerce was about 
six millions, varying in value from fifteen cents to five hundred 
dollars. When every respectable man in Europe and America 
wore a beaver skin upon his head, or a part of one, and when a 
good beaver skin could be bought in Western New York for a 
dollar's worth of trash, and could be sold in London for twenty- 
five English shillings, and when those twenty-five English shil- 
lings could be invested in English cloth and cutlery, and sold 
in New York for forty shillings, it may be imagined that fur- 
trading was a very good business. Mr. Astor had his share of 
the cream of it, and that was the foundation of his colossal for- 
tune. Hence, too, the tender love he felt for a fine fur. 

In the next place, his ventures to China were sometimes ex- 
ceedingly fortunate. A fair profit on a voyage to China at that 
day was thirty thousand dollars. Mr. Astor has been known to 
gain seventy thousand, and to have his money in his pocket with- 
in the year. He was remarkably lucky in the war of 1812. All 
his ships escaped capture, and arriving at a time when foreign 
commerce was almost annihilated and tea had doubled in price, 
his gains were so immense, that the million or more lost in the 
Astoi-ian enterprise gave him not even a momentary inconvenience. 

At that time, too, tea merchants of large capital had an advan- 
tage which they do not now enjoy. A writer explains the man- 
ner in which the business was done in those days : — 

" A house that could raise money enough thirty years ago to 
send $260,000 in specie, could soon have an uncommon capital, 
and this was the working of the old system. The Griswolds 
owned the ship Panama. They started her from New York in 
the month of May, with a cargo of perhaps $30,000 worth of 
ginseng, spelter, lead, iron, etc., and $170,000 in Spanish dollars. 
The ship goes on the voyage, reaches Whampoa in safety (a few 
miles below Canton). Her supercargo in two months has her 
loaded with tea, some china ware, a great deal of cassia or false 
cinnamon, and a few other articles. Suppose the cargo, mainly 
tea, costing about thirty-seven cents (at that time) per pound on 
the average. 



JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 455 

" The duty was enofmous iu those days. It was twice the 
cost of the tea, at least : so that a tea cargo of $ 200,000, when 
it had paid duty of seventy -five cents per pound (which would 
be $400,000), amounted to $600,000. The profit was at least 
fifty per cent on the original cost, or $ 100,000, and would make 
the cargo worth $700,000. 

" The cargo of teas would be sold almost on arrival (say eleven 
or twelve months after the ship left New York in May) to whole- 
sale grocers, for their notes at four and six months, — say for 
$700,000. In those years there was credit given by the United 
States of nine, twelve, and eighteen months ! So that the East- 
India or Canton merchant, after his ship had made one voyage, 
had the use of government capital to the extent of $ 400,000, on 
the ordinary cargo of a China ship. 

" No sooner had the ship Panama arrived (or any of the regu- 
lar East-Indiamen), than her cargo would be exchanged for 
grocers' notes for $ 700,000. These notes could be turned into 
specie very easily, and the owner had only to pay his bonds for 
$400,000 duty, at nine, twelve, and eighteen months, giving him 
time actually to send two more ships with $200,000 each to 
Canton, and have them back again in New York before the bonds 
on the first cargo were due. 

" John Jacob Astor at one period of his life had several vessels 
operating in this way. They would go to the Pacific (Oregon) 
and carry from thence furs to Canton, These would be sold at 
large profits. Then the cargoes of tea to New York would pay 
enormous duties, which Astor did not have to pay to the United 
States for a year and a half. His tea cargoes would be sold for 
good four and six months paper, or perhaps cash ; so that for 
eighteen or twenty years John Jacob Astor had what was actual- 
ly a free-of-interest loan from Government of over Jive millions 
of dollars. " * 

But it was neither his tea trade nor his fur trade that gave 
Astor twenty millions of dollars. It was his sagacity in investing 
his profits that made him the richest man in America. When 
he first trod the streets of New York, in 1784, the city was a 

* Old Merchants of New York. First Series. 



456 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

snug, leafy place of twenty-five thousand inhabitants, situated at 
the extremity of the Island, mostly below Cortlandt Street. Iq 
1800, when he began to have money to invest, the city had more 
than doubled in population, and had advanced nearly a mile up 
the Island. Now, Astor was a shrewd calculator of the future. 
No reason appeared why New York should not repeat this doub- 
ling game and this mile of extension every fifteen years. He 
acted upon the supposition, and fell into the habit of buying 
lands and lots just beyond the verge of the city. One little anec- 
dote will show the wisdom of this proceeding. He sold a lot in 
the vicinity of Wall Street, about the year 1810, for eight thou- 
sand dollars, which was supposed to be somewhat under its value. 
The purchaser, after the papers were signed, seemed disposed to 
chuckle over his bargain. 

" Why, Mr, Astor," said he, " in a few years this lot will be 
worth twelve thousand dollars." 

" Very true," replied Astor ; " but now you shall see what I 
will do with this money. With eight thousand dollars I buy eighty 
lots above Canal Street. By the time your lot is worth twelve 
thousand dollars, my eighty lots will be worth eighty thousand 
dollars " ; which proved to be the fact. 

His purchase of the Richmond Hill estate of Aaron Burr was 
a case in point. He bought the hundred and sixty acres at a 
thousand dollars an acre, and in twelve years the land was worth 
fifteen hundred dollars a lot. In the course of time the Island 
was dotted all over with Astor lands, — to such an extent that 
the whole income of his estate for fifty years could be invested in 
new houses without buying any more land. 

His land speculations, however, were by no means confined to 
the Httle Island of Manhattan. Aged readers cannot have for- 
gotten the most celebrated of all his operations of this kind, by 
which he acquired a legal title to one third of the county of Put- 
nam in this State. This enormous tract was part of the estate of 
Roger Morris and Mary his wife, who, by adhering to the King 
of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, forfeited their landed 
property in the State of New York. Having been duly attainted 
as public enemies, they fled to England at the close of the war, 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 457 

and the State sold their lands, in small parcels, to honest "Whig 
farmers. The estate comprised fifty-one thousand one hundred 
and two acres, upon which were living, in 1809, more than seven 
hundred families, all relying upon the titles which the State of 
New York had given. Now Mr. Astor stepped forward to dis- 
turb the security of this community of farmers. It appeared, and 
was proved beyond doubt, that Roger and Mary Morris had 
only possessed a life-interest in this estate, and that, therefore, it 
was only that life-interest which the State could legally confis- 
cate. The moment Roger and Mary Morris ceased to live, the 
property would fall to their heirs, with all the houses, barns, and 
other improvements thereon. After a most thorough examina- 
tion of the papers by the leading counsel of that day, Mr. Astor 
bought the rights of the heirs, in 1809, for twenty thousand 
pounds sterling. At that time Roger Morris was no more ; and 
Mary his Avife was- nearly eighty, and extremely infirm. She 
lingered, however, for some years ; and it was not till after the 
peace of 1815 that the claims of Mr. Astor were pressed. The 
consternation of the farmers and the astonishment of the people 
generally, when at length the great millionnaire stretched out his 
hand to pluck this large ripe pear, may be imagined. A great 
clamor arose against him. It cannot be denied, however, that he 
acted in this business with moderation and dignity. Upon the 
first rumor of his claim, in 1814, commissioners were appointed 
by the Legislature to inquire into it. These gentlemen, finding 
the claim more formidable than had been suspected, asked Mr. 
Astor for what sum he would compromise. The lands were val- 
ued at six hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars, but Astor 
replied that he would sell his claim for three hundred thousand. 
The offer was not accepted, and the affair lingered. In 1818, 
Mary Morris being supposed to be at the jDoint of death, and the 
farmers being in constant dread of the writs of ejectment which 
her death would bring upon them, commissioners were again ap- 
pointed by the Legislature to look into the matter. Again Mr. 
Astor was asked upon what terms he would compromise. He 
replied, January 19, 1819 : — 

"In 1813 or 1814 a similar proposition was made to me by the 

20 



458 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

commissioners then appointed by the Honorable the Legislature 
of this State, when I offered to compromise for the sura of three 
hundred thousand dollars, which, considering the value of the 
property in question, was thought very reasonable ; and, at the 
present period, when the life of Mrs. Morris is, according to cal- 
culation, worth little or nothing, she being near eighty-sis years 
of age, and the property more valuable than it was in 1813, I am 
still willing to receive the amount which I then stated, with in- 
terest on the same, payable in money or stock, bearing an interest 
of — per cent, payable quarterly. The stock may be made pay- 
able at such periods as the Honorable the Legislature may deem 
proper. This offer will, I trust, be considered as liberal, and as 
a proof of my willingness to compromise on terms which are rea- 
sonable, considering the value of the property, the price which it 
cost me, and the inconvenience of having so long laid out of my 
money, which, if employed in commercial operations, would most 
likely have produced better profits." 

The Legislature were not yet prepared to compromise. It was 
not till 1827 that a test case was selected and brouiiht to trial 
before a jury. Tlie most eminent counsel were employed on the 
part of the State, — Daniel Webster and Martin Van Buren 
among them. Astor's cause was entrusted to Emmet, Ogden, 
and others. We believe that Aaron Burr was consulted on the 
part of Mr. Astor, though he did not appear in the trial. The 
efforts of the array of counsel employed by the State were 
exerted in vain to find a flaw in the paper upon which Astor's 
claim mainly rested. Mr. Webster's speech on this occasion be- 
trays, even to the unprofessional reader, both that he had no case 
and that he knew he had not, for he indulged in a strain of re- 
mark that could only have been designed to prejudice, not con- 
vince, the jury. 

" It is a claim for lands," said he, " not in their wild and for- 
est state, but for lands the intrinsic value of which is mingled 
with the labor expended upon them. It is no every-day pur- 
chase, for it extends over towns and counties, and almost takes in 
a degree of latitude. It is a stupendous speculation. The indi- 
vidual who now claims it has not succeeded to it by inheritance ; 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 459 

he has not attained it, as he did that vast wealth which no one 
less envies him than I do, by fair and honest exertions in com- 
mercial enterprise, but by speculation, by purchasing the forlorn 
hope of the heirs of a family driven from their country by a bill 
of attainder. By the defendants, on the contrary, the lands in 
question are held as a patrimony. They have labored for years 
to improve them. The rugged hills had grown green under their 
cultivation before a question was raised as to the integrity of their 
titles." 

A line of remark like this would appeal powerfully to a jury 
of farmers. Its effect, however, was destroyed by the simple ob- 
servation of one of the opposing counsel : — 

" Mr. Astor bought this property confiding in the justice of the 
State of New York, firmly believing that in the litigation of his 
claim his rights would be maintained." 

It is creditable to the administration of justice in New York, 
and creditable to the very institution of trial by jury, that Mr. 
Aster's most unpopular and even odious cause was triumphant. 
Warned by this verdict, the Legislature consented to compromise 
on INIr. Astor's own terms. The requisite amount of "Astor 
stock," as it was called, was created. Mr. Astor received about 
half a million of dollars, and the titles of the lands were secured 
to their rightful owners. 

The crowning glory of Mr. Astor's mercantile career was that 
vast and brilliant enterprise which Washington Irving has com- 
memorated in "Astoria." No other single individual has ever 
set on foot a scheme so extensive, so difficult, and so costly as 
this ; nor has any such enterprise been carried out with such sus- 
tained energy and pei'severance. To establish a line of trading- 
posts from St. Louis to the Pacific, a four-months' journey in a 
land of wilderness, prairie, mountain, and desert, inhabited by 
treacherous or hostile savages ; to found a permanent settlement 
on the Pacific coast as the grand depot of furs and supplies ; to 
arrange a plan by which the furs collected should be regularly 
transported to China, and the ships return to New York laden 
with tea and silks, and then proceed once more to the Pacific 
coast to repeat the circuit; to maintain all the parts of this scheme 



J 



460 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

without the expectation of any but a remote profit, sending ship 
after ship before any certain intelligence of the first ventures had 
arrived, — this was an enterprise which had been memorable if it 
had been undertaken by a wealthy corporation or a powerful 
government, instead of a private merchant, unaided by any re- 
sources but his own. At every moment in the conduct of this 
magnificent attempt Mr. Astor appears the gi-eat man. Plis part- 
ing instructions to the captain of his first ship call to mind those 
of General Washington to St. Clair on a similar occasion. " All 
the accidents that have yet happened," said the merchant, " arose 
from too much confidence in the Indians." The ship was lost, a 
year after, by the disregard of this last warning. When the news 
reached New York of the massacre of the crew and the blowincj- 
up of the ship, the man who flew into a passion at seeing a little 
boy drop a wineglass behaved with a composure that was the 
theme of general admiration. He attended the theatre the same 
evening, and entered heartily into the play. Mr. Irving relates 
that a friend having expressed surprise at this, Mr. Astor re- 
plied : — 

" What would you have me do ? Would you have me stay at 
home and weep for what I cannot help ? " 

This was not indifference ; for when, after nearly two years of 
weary waiting, he heard of the safety and success of the overland 
expedition, he was so overjoyed that he could scarcely contain 
himself. 

" I felt ready," said he, " to fall upon my knees in a transport 
of gratitude." 

A touch in one of bis letters shows the absolute confidence he 
felt in his own judgment and abilities, a confidence invariably 
exhibited by men of the first executive talents. 

" Were I on the spot," he wrote to one of his agents when the 
affiiirs of the settlement appeared desperate, "and-tiad the man- 
agement of affairs, I would defy them all ; but, as it is, everything 
depends upon you and the friends about you. Our enterprise is 
grand and deserves success, and I hope in God it will meet it. 
If my object was merely gain of money, I should say : ' Think 
whether it is best to save what we can and abandon the place ' ; 
but the thought is like a dagger to my heart." 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 461 

He intimates here that his object was not merely " gain of 
money." What was it, then ? Mr. Irving informs us that it was 
desire of fame. We should rather say that when nature endows 
a man with a remarkable gift she also implants within liim the 
love of exercising it. Astor loved to plan a vast, far-reaching 
enterprise. He loved it as Morphy loves to play chess, as Napo- 
leon loved to plan a campaign, as Raphael loved to paint, and 
Handel to compose. 

The war of 1812 foiled the enterprise. "But for that wai-," 
Mr. Astor used to say, " I should have been the richest man that 
ever lived." He expected to go on expending money for several 
years, and then to gain a steady annual profit of millions. It 
was, however, that very war that enabled him to sustain the 
enormous losses of the enterprise without injury to his estate, or 
even a momentary inconvenience. During the first year of the 
war he had the luck to receive two or three cargoes of tea from 
China, despite the British cruisers. In the second year of the 
war, when the Government was reduced to bori'ow at eighty, he 
invested largely in the loan, which, one year after the peace, 
stood at one hundred and twenty. 

Mr. Astor at all times was a firm believer in the destiny of the 
United States. In other words, he held its public stock in pro- 
found respect. He had little to say of politics, but he was a 
supporter of the old Whig party for many years, and had a 
great regard, personal and political, for its leader and orna- 
ment, Henry Clay. He was never better pleased than when 
lie entertained Mr. Clay at his own house. It ought to be men- 
tioned in this connection that when, in June, 1812, the merchants 
of New York memorialized the Government in favor of the em- 
bargo, which almost annihilated the commerce of the port, the 
name of John Jacob Astor headed the list of signatures. 

He was an active business man in this city for about forty-six 
years, — from his twenty-first to his sixty-seventh year. Toward 
the year 1830 he began to withdraw from business, and undertook 
no new enterprises, except such as the investment of his income 
involved. His three daughters were married. His son and lieir 
was a man of thirty. Numerous grandchildren were around 



462 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

him, for whom he manifested a true German fondness ; not, how- 
ever, regarding them Avith equal favor. He dispensed, occasion- 
ally, a liberal hospitality at his modest house, though that hospi- 
tality was usually bestowed upon men whose presence at his 
table conferred distinction upon him who sat at the head of it. 
He was fond, strange as it may seem, of the society of literary 
men. For Washington Irving he always professed a warm re- 
gard, liked to have him at his house, visited him, and made much 
of him, Fitz-Greene Halleck, one of the best talkers of his 
day, a man full of fun, anecdote, and fancy, handsome, graceful, 
and accomplished, was a great favorite with him. He afterward 
invited the poet to reside with him and take charge of his affairs, 
which Mr. Halleck did for many years, to the old gentleman's 
perfect satisfaction. Still later Dr. Cogswell won his esteem, and 
was named by him Librarian of the Astor Library. For his 
own part, though he rather liked to be read to in his latter days, 
he collected no library, no pictures, no objects of curiosity. As 
he had none of the wasteful vices, so also he had none of the 
costly tastes. Like all other rich men, he was beset continually 
by applicants for pecuniary aid, especially by his own country- 
men. As a rule he refused to give : and he was right. He held 
beggary of all descriptions in strong contempt, and seemed to 
think that, in this country, want and fault are synonymous. 
Nevertheless, we are told that he did, now and then, bestow small 
sums in charity, though we have failed to get trustworthy evi- 
dence of a single instance of his doing so. It is, no doubt, ab- 
solutely necessary for a man who is notoriously rich to guard 
against imposture, and to hedge himself about against the swarms 
of solicitors who pervade a large and wealthy city. If he did 
not, he would be overwhelmed and devoured. His time would 
be all consumed and his estate squandered in satisfying the de- 
mands of importunate impudence. Still, among the crowd of 
applicants there is here and there one whose claim upon the aid 
of the rich man is just. It were much to be desired that a way 
should be devised by which these meritorious askers could be 
sifted from the mass, and the nature of their requests made known 
to men who have the means and the wish to aid such. Some 



JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 463 

kind of Benevolent Intelligence Office appears to be needed 
amonff us. In the absence of such an institution we must not be 
surprised that men renowned for their wealth convert themselves 
into human porcupines, and erect their defensive armor at the 
approach of every one who carries a subscription-book. True, 
a generous man might establish a private bureau of investigation ; 
but a generous man is not very likely to acquire a fortune of 
twenty millions. Such an accumulation of wealth is just as wise 
as if a man w^ho had to walk ten miles on a hot day should, of 
his own choice, carry on his back a large sack of potatoes. A 
man of superior sense and feeling will not waste his life so, unless 
he has in view a grand public object. On the contrary, he will 
rather do as Franklin did, who, having acquired at the age of 
forty^wo a modest competence, sold out his thriving business on 
easy terms to a younger man, and devoted the rest of his happy 
life to the pursuit of knowledge and the service of his country. 
But we cannot all be Franklins. In the affairs of the world mil- 
lionnaires are as indispensable as philosophers ; and it is fortunate 
for society that some men take pleasure in heaping up enormous 
masses of capital. 

Having retired from business, Mr. Astor determined to fulfil 
the vow of his youth, and build in Broadway a house larger and 
costlier than any it could then boast. Behold the result in the 
Astor House, which remains to this day one of our most solid, 
imposing, and respectable structures. The ground on which the 
hotel stands was covered with substantial three-story brick houses, 
one of which Astor himself occupied ; and it was thought at the 
time a wasteful and rash proceeding to destroy them. Old Mr. 
Coster, a retired merchant of great wealth, who lived next door 
to Mr. Astor's residence, was extremely indisposed to remove, 
and held out long against every offer of the millionnaire. His 
house was worth thirty thousand dollars. Astor offered him that 
sum ; but the offer was very positively declined, and the old gen- 
tleman declared it to be his intention to spend the remainder of 
his days in the house. Mr. Astor offered forty thousand wnthout 
effect. At length the indomitable projector revealed his purpose 
to his neighbor. 



464 JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 

"Mr. Coster/' said he, "I want to build a hotel. I have got 
all the other lots ; now name your own price." 

To which Coster replied by confessing the real obstacle to the 
sale. 

" The fact is," said he, " I can't sell unless Mrs. Coster con- 
sents. If she is willing, I '11 sell for sixty thousand, and you can 
call to-morrow morning and ask her." 

Mr. Astor presented himself at the time named. 

" "Well, Mr. Astor," said the lady in the tone of one who was 
conferring a very great favor for nothing, " we are such old 
friends that I am willing for your sake." 

So the house was bought, and with the proceeds Mr. Coster 
built the spacious granite mansion a mile up Broadway, which is 
now known as Barnum's Museum. Mr. Astor used to relate this 
story with great glee. He was particularly amused at the sim- 
plicity of the old lady in considering it a great favor to him to 
sell her house at twice its value. It was at this time that he re- 
moved to a wide, two-story brick house opposite Niblo's, the 
front door of which bore a large silver plate, exhibiting to awe- 
struck passers-by the words : " Mr. Astor." Soon after the 
hotel M'as finished, he made a present of it to his eldest son, or, 
in legal language, he sold it to him for the sum of one dollar, " to 
him in hand paid." 

In the decline of his life, when his vast fortune was safe from 
the perils of business, he was still as sparing in his personal ex- 
penditures, as close in his bargains, as watchful over his accumu- 
lations as he had been when economy was essential to his sol- 
vency and progress. He enjoyed keenly the consciousness, the 
feeling of being rich. The roll-book of his possessions was his 
Bible. He scanned it fondly, and saw with quiet but deep de- 
light the catalogue of his property lengthening from month to 
month. The love of accumulation grew with his years until it 
ruled him like a tyrant. If at fifty he possessed his millions, at 
sixty-five his millions possessed him. Only to his own children 
and to their children was he liberal ; and his liberality to them 
was all arranged with a view to keeping his estate in the family, 
and to cause it at every moment to tend toward a final consolida- 



JOHN JACOB ASTOE. 4G5 

tion in one enormous mass. He was ever considerate for the 
comfort of his imbecile son. One of his last enterprises was to 
build for him a commodious residence. 

In 1832, one of his daughters having married a European 
nobleman, he allowed himself the pleasure of a visit to her. He 
remained abroad till 1835, when he hurried home in consequence 
of the disturbance in financial affairs, caused by General Jack- 
son's war upon the Bank of the United States. The captain of 
the ship in which he sailed from Havre to New York has related 
to us some curious incidents of the voyage. Mr. Astor reached 
Havre when the ship, on the point of sailing, had every state- 
room engaged ; but he was so anxious to get home, that the cap- 
tain, who had commanded ships for him in former years, gave up 
to him his own state-room. Head winds and boisterous seas kept 
the vessel beating about and tossing in the channel for many 
days. The great man was very sick and still more alarmed. At 
length, being persuaded that he should not survive the voyage, 
he asked the captain to run in and set him ashore on the coast of 
England. The captain dissuaded him. The old man urged his 
request at every opportunity, and said at last : " I give you tou- 
sand dollars to put me aboard a pilot-boat." He was so vehe- 
ment and importunate, that one day the captain, worried out of 
all patience, promised that if he did not get out of the Channel 
before the next morning, he would run in and put him ashore. It 
happened that the wind changed in the afternoon and wafted the 
ship into the broad ocean. But the troubles of the sea-sick million- 
naire had only just begun. A heavy gale of some days' duration 
blew the vessel along the western coast of Ireland. Mr. Astor, 
thoroughly panic-stricken, now offei-ed the captain ten thousand 
dollai's if he would put him ashore, anywhere on the wild and 
rocky coast of the Emerald Isle. In vain the captain remon- 
strated. In vain he reminded the old gentleman of the danger 
of forfeiting his insurance. 

" Insurance ! " exclaimed Astor, " can't I insure your ship 
myself?" 

In vain the captain mentioned the rights of the other passen- 
gers. In vain he described the solitary and rock-bound coast, 

20* DD 



466 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

and detailed the difficulties and dangers whicli attended its ap- 
proach. Nothing would appease him. He said he would take 
all the responsibility, brave all the perils, endure all the conse- 
quences ; only let him once more feel the firm ground under his 
feeL The gale having abated, the captain yielded to his entrea- 
ties, and engaged, if the other passengers would consent to the 
delay, to stand in and put him ashore. Mr. Astor went into the 
cabin and proceeded to write what was expected to be a draft for 
ten thousand dollars in favor of the owners of the ship on his 
agent in New York. He handed to the captain the result of his 
efforts. It was a piece of paper covered with writing that was 
totally illegible. 

" What is this ? " asked the captain. 

"A draft upon my son for ten thousand dollars," was the reply. 

" But no one can read it." 

" O yes, my son will know what it is. My hand trembles so 
that I cannot write any better." . 

" But," said the captain, " you can at least write your name. I 
am acting for the owners of the ship, and I cannot risk their 
property for a piece of paper that no one can read. Let one of 
the gentlemen draw up a draft in proper form ; you sign it ; and 
I will put you ashore." 

The old gentleman would not consent to this mode of proceed- 
ing, and the affair was dropped. 

A favorable wind blew the ship swiftly on her way, and Mr. 
Astor's alarm subsided. But even on the banks of Newfound- 
land, two thirds of the way across, when the captain went upon 
the poop to speak a ship bound for Livei-pool, old Astor climbed 
up after him, saying, " Tell them I give tousand dollars if they 
take a passenger." 

Astor lived to the age of eightj^-four. During the last few 
years of his life his faculties were sensibly impaired ; he was a 
child again. It was, however, while his powers and his judgment 
were in full vigor that he determined to follow the example of 
Girard, and bequeath a portion of his estate for the purpose of 
"rendering a public benefit to the city of New York." He con- 
sulted Mr. Irving, Mr. Ilalleck, Dr. Cogswell, and his own son 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 467 

with regard to the object of this bequest. All his friends con- 
curred in recommending a public library ; and, accordingly, in 
1839, he added the well-known codicil to his will which conse- 
crated four hundred thousand dollars to this purpose. To Irving's 
Astoria and to the Astor Library he will owe a lasting fame in 
the country of his adoption. 

The last considerable sum he was ever known to give away 
was a contribution to aid the election to the Presidency of his 
old friend Henry Clay. The old man was always fond of a 
compliment, and seldom avei'se to a joke. It was the timely 
application of a jocular compliment that won from him this last 
effort of generosity. When the committee were presented to him, 
he began to excuse himself, evidently intending to decline giving. 

" I am not now interested in these things," said he. " Those 
gentlemen who are in business, and whose property depends upon 
the issue of the election, ought to give. But I am now an old 
man. I have n't anything to do with commerce, and it makes no 
difference to me what the government does. I don't make money 
any more, and have n't any concern in the matter." 

One of the committee replied : " Why, Mr. Astor, you are like 
Alexander, when he wept because there were no more worlds to 
conquer. You have made all the money, and now there is no 
more money to make." The old eye twinkled at the blended 
compliment and jest. 

" Ha, ha, ha ! very good, that 's very good. Well, well, I give 
you something." 

Whereupon he drew his check for fifteen hundred dollars. 

When all else had died within him, when he was at last nour- 
ished like an infant at a woman's breast, and when, being no 
longer able to ride in a carriage, he was daily tossed in blanket 
for exercise, he still retained a strong interest in the care and 
increase of his property. His agent called daily upon him to 
render a report of moneys received. One morning this gentle- 
man chanced to enter his room while he was enjoying his blanket 
exercise. The old man cried out from the middle of his blanket, — 

" Has Mrs. paid that rent yet ? " 

" No," replied the agent. 



468 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

" Well, but she must pay it," said the poor old man. 

" Mr. Astor," rejoined the agent, " she can't pay it now ; she 
has had misfortunes, and we must give her time." 

" No, no," said Astor ; " I tell you she can pay it, and she will 
pay it. You don't go the right way to work with her." 

The agent took leave, and mentioned the anxiety of the old 
gentleman with regard to this unpaid rent to his son, who counted 
out the requisite sum, and told the agent to give it to the old man 
as if he had received it from the tenant. 

" There ! " exclaimed Mr. Astor when he received the money, 
" I told you she would pay it, if you went the right way to work 
with her." 

Who would have twenty millions at such a price ? 

On the twenty-ninth of March, 1848, of old age merely, in the 
presence of his family and friends, without pain or disquiet, this 
remarkable man breathed his last. He was buried in a vault in 
the church of St. Thomas in Broadway. Though he expressly 
declared in his will that he was a member of the Eeformed Ger- 
man Congregation, no clergyman of that church took part in the 
services of his funerah The unusual number of six Episcopal 
Doctors of Divinity assisted at the ceremony. A bishop could 
have scarcely expected a more distinguished funeral homage. 
Such a thing it is in a commercial city to die worth twenty mil- 
lions ! The pall-bearers were Washington Irving, Philip Hone, 
Sylvanus Miller, James G. King, Isaac Bell, David B. Ogden, 
Thomas J. Oakley, Ramsey Crooks, and Jacob B. Taylor. 

The public curiosity with regard to the will of the deceased 
millionnaire was fully gratified by the enterprise of the Herald, 
which published it entire in five columns of its smallest type a 
day or two after the funeral. The ruling desires of Mr. Astor 
with regard to his property were evidently these two : 1. To 
provide amply and safely for his children, grandchildren, nephews, 
and nieces ; 2. To keep his estate, as much as was consistent 
with his desire, in one mass in the hands of his eldest son. His 
brother Henry, the butcher, had died childless and rich, leaving 
his property to Mr. William B. Astor. To the descendants of 
the brother in Germany Mr. Astor left small but sufficient pen- 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 469 

sions. To many of his surviving children and grandchildren in 
America he left life-interests and stocks, which seem designed to 
produce an average of about fifteen thousand dollars a year. 
Other grandsons were to have twenty-five thousand dollars on 
reaching the age of twenty-five, and the same sum when they 
were thirty. His favorite grandson, Charles Astor Bristed, since 
well known to the public as an author and poet, was left amply 
provided for. He directed his executors to " provide for my un- 
fortunate son, John Jacob Astor, and to procure for him all the 
comforts which his condition does or may require." For this pur- 
pose ten thousand dollars a year was directed to be appropriated, 
and the house built for him in Fourteenth Street, near Ninth 
Avenue, was to be his for life. If he should be restored to the 
use of his faculties, he was to have an income of one hundred 
thousand dollars. The number of persons, all relatives or connec- 
tions of the deceased, who were benefited by the will, was about 
twenty-five. To his old friend and manager, Fitz-Greene Hal- 
leck, he left the somewhat ridiculous annuity of two hundred dol- 
lars, which Mr. William B. Astor voluntarily increased to fifteen 
hundred. Nor was this the only instance in which the heir rec- 
tified the errors and supplied the omissions of the will. He had 
the justice to send a considerable sum to the brave old captain 
who saved for Mr. Astor the large property in China imperilled 
by the sudden death of an agent. The minor bequests and lega- 
cies of Mr. Astor absorbed about two millions of his estate. The 
rest of his property fell to his eldest son, under whose careful 
management it is supposed to have increased to an amount not 
less than forty millions. This may, however, be an exaggeration. 
Mr. William B. Astor minds his own business, and does not im- 
part to others the secrets of his rent-roll. The number of his 
houses in this city is said to be seven hundred and twenty. 

The bequests of Mr. Astor for purposes of benevolence show 
good sense and good feeling. The Astor Library fund of four 
hundred thousand dollars was the largest item. Next in amount 
was fifty thousand dollars for the benefit of the poor of his native 
village in Germany. " To the German Society of New York," 
continued the will, " I give thirty thousand dollars on condition 



470 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

of their investing it in bond and mortgage, and applying it for the 
purpose of keeping an office and giving advice and information 
■without charge to all emigrants arriving here, and for the purpose 
of protecting them against imposition." To the Home for Aged 
Ladies he gave thirty thousand dollars, and to the Blind Asylum 
and the Half-Orphan Asylum each five thousand dollars. To the 
German Reformed Congregation, " of which I am a member," he 
left the moderate sum of two thousand dollars. These objects 
were wisely chosen. The sums left for them, also, were in many 
cases of the amount most likely to be well employed. Twenty- 
five thousand dollars he left to Columbia College, but unfortunate- 
ly repented, and annulled the bequest in a codicil. 

We need not enlarge on the success which has attended the 
bequest for the Astor Library, — a bequest to which Mr. William 
B. Astor has added, in land, books, and money, about two hun- 
dred thousand dollars. It is the ornament and boast of the city. 
Nothing is wanting to its complete utility but an extension of the 
time of its being accessible to the public. Such a library, in such 
a city as this, should be open at sunrise, and close at ten in the 
evening. If but one studious youth should desire to avail him- 
self of the morning hours before going to his daily work, the in- 
terests of that one would justify the directors in opening the 
treasures of the library at the rising of the sun. In the evening, 
of course, the library would probably be attended by a greater 
number of readers than in all the hours of the day together. 

The bequest to the village of Waldorf has resulted in the 
founding of an institution that appears to be doing a great deal 
of good in a quiet German manner. The German biographer of 
Mr. Astor, from whom we have derived some particulars of his 
early life, expatiates upon the merits of this establishment, which, 
be informs us, is called the Astor House. 

" Certain knowledge," he says, " of Astor's bequest reached 
Waldorf only in 1850, when a nephew of Mr. Astor's and one 
of the executors of his will appeared from New York in the tes- 
tator's native town with power to pay over the money to the 
proper persons. He kept himself mostly in Heidelberg, and or- 
ganized a supervisory board to aid in the disposition of the funds 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR." 471 

in accordance with the testator's intentions. This board was to 
have its head-quarters in Heidelberg, and was to consist of profes- 
sors in the University there, and clergymen, not less than five in 
all. The board of control, however, consists of the clergy of 
"Waldorf, the burgomaster, the physician, a citizen named every 
three years by the Common Council, and the governor of the In- 
stitution, who must be a teacher by profession. This latter board 
has control of all the interior arrangements of the Institution, and 
the care of the children and beneficiaries. The leading objects 
of the Astor House are: 1. The care of the poor, who, through 
age, disease, or other causes, are incapable of labor ; 2. The rear- 
ing and instruction of poor children, especially those who live in 
"Waldorf Non-residents are received if there is room, but they 
must make compensation for their board and instruction. Chil- 
dren are received at the age of six, and maintained until they are 
fifteen or sixteen. Besides school instruction, there is ample pro- 
vision for physical culture. They are trained in active and in- 
dustrious habits, and each of them, according to his disposition, is 
to be taught a trade, or instructed in agriculture, market-garden- 
ing, the care of vineyards, or of cattle, with a view to rendering 
them efficient farm-servants or stewards. It is also in contem- 
plation to assist the blind and the deaf and dumb, and, finally, t d 
establish a nursery for very young children left destitute. Cath- 
olics and Protestants are admitted on equal terms, religious dif- 
ferences not being recognized in the applicants for admission. 
Some time having elapsed before the preliminary arrangements 
w^ere completed, the accumulated interest of the fund went so far 
toward paying for the buildings, that of the original fifty thousand 
dollars not less than forty-three thousand have been permanently 
invested for the support of the Institution." 

Thus they manage bequests in Germany ! The Astor House 
was opened with much ceremony, January 9, 1854, the very year 
in which the Astor Library was opened to the public in the city 
of New York. The day of the founder's death is annually cele- 
brated in the chapel of the Institution, which is adorned by his 
portrait. 

These two institutions will carry the name of John Jacob Astor 



472 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

to the latest generations. But they are not the only services 
which he rendered to the public. It would be absurd to contend 
that in accumulating his enormous estate, and in keeping it al- 
most entirely in the hands of his eldest son, he was actuated by a 
regard for the public good. He probably never thought of the 
public good in connection with the bulk of his property. Never- 
theless, America is so constituted that every man in it of force 
and industry is necessitated to be a public servant. If this 
colossal fortune had been gained in Europe it would probably 
have been consumed in what is there called " founding a family." 
Mansions would have been built with it, parks laid out, a title of 
nobility purchased ; and the income, wasted in barren and stupid 
ma"-nificence would have maintained a host of idle, worthless, 
and pampered menials. Here, on the contrary, it is expended 
ahnost wholly in providing for the people of New York the very 
commodity of which they stand in most pressing need ; namely, 
new houses. The simple reason why the rent of a small house 
in New York is two thousand dollars a year is, because the sup- 
ply of houses is unequal to the demand. We need at this mo- 
ment five thousand mOre houses in the city of New York for the 
decent accommodation of its inhabitants at rents which they can 
aiford to pay. The man who does more than any one else to 
supply the demand for houses is the patient, abstemious, and 
laborious heir of the Astor estate. He does a good day's work 
for us in this business every day, and all the wages he receives 
for so much care and toil is a moderate subsistence for himself 
and his family, and the very troublesome reputation of being the 
richest man in America. And the business is done with the 
minimum of waste in every department. In a quiet little office 
in Prince Street, the manager of the estate, aided by two or three 
aged clerks (one of them of fifty-five years' standing in the office), 
transacts the business of a property larger than that of many sov- 
ereign princes. Everything, also, is done promptly and in the 
best manner. If a tenant desires repairs or alterations, an agent 
calls at the house within twenty-four hours, makes the requisite 
inquiries, reports, and the work is forthwith begun, or the tenant 
is notified that it will not be done. The concurrent testimony of 



i 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 47 



o 



Mr. Astor's teuauts is, that he is one of the most liberal and oblig- 
ing of landlords. 

So far, therefore, the Astor estate, immense as it is, appears to 
have been an unmixed good to the city in which it is mainly in- 
vested. There is every reason to believe that, in the hands of 
the next heir, it will continue to be managed with the same pru- 
dence and economy that mark the conduct of its present proprie- 
tor. TVe indulge the hope that either the present or some future 
possessor may devote a portion of his vast revenue to the build- 
in" of a new order of tenement houses, on a scale that will en- 
able a man who earns two dollars a day to occupy apartments fit 
for the residence of a family of human beings. The time is ripe 
for it. May we live to see in some densely populated portion of 
the city, a new and grander Astor House arise, that shall de- 
monstrate to the capitalists of every city in America that nothing 
will pay better as an investment than houses for the people, 
which shall afford to an honest laborer rooms in a clea-n, orderly, 
and commodious palace, at the price he now pays for a corner of a 
dirty fever-breeding barrack ! 



THE END. 



Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welcli, Bigelow, & Co. 



OTHER WORKS OF JAMES PARTON. 



I. LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. 

3 vols. Large i2mo. With Portraits. $9.00. 

II. LIFE AND TIMES OF AARON BURR. 

2 vols. Large 121110. With Portraits. $6.00. 

III. LIFE AND TIMES OF BENJAMIN 
FRANKLIN 

2 vols. Large i2mo. With Portraits. $6.00. 



'o^ 



IV. GENERAL BUTLER IN NEW ORLEANS. 

I vol. Large i2mo. $3.00. 

V. HUMOROUS POETRY OF THE ENGLISH 
LANGUAGE. From Chaucer to Saxe. 

I vol. i2mo. With Portraits. $3.00. 



These works are issued in uniform size and style with this volume. 

TICKNOR & FIELDS, Publishers. 



